Lim Guan Eng may have told his biggest lie yet
The Third Force
Yesterday, Lim Guan Eng did what any poker-faced Chief Minister (CM) would never do in a million years – he called a Spade a Lim.
The soon-to-be-former CM of Penang poured scorn on his detractors from PAS and BN, who he said had insisted that he take a leave of absence pending the outcome of investigations against him. According to Guan Eng, the calls were politically motivated and heavily slanted – the Prime Minister was himself never asked to do so despite being accused of corruption.
But Guan Eng was lying.
On the 7th of December 2015, (then) UMNO Deputy President Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had called for the Prime Minister to take a break pending the outcome of investigations against state investment firm 1MDB. Fourteen days later, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man – the Deputy President of PAS – resonated with Muhyiddin, making it the second time a party deputy president had called for the Prime Minister to absent himself from office.
So Guan Eng lied!
Let me run that by you again – two deputy presidents from across the political divide had demanded for Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak to go on leave last December. And they represented the very parties Guan Eng now claims had conspired to demand his absence from office.
Come to think of it, Guan Eng has himself in recent times thrown his weight behind Muhyiddin, who his party now claims radiates an ‘incandescent glory’ befitting that of a ‘political martyr’. According to DAP, Muhyiddin was politically castrated for ‘telling the truth’ and for ‘sticking to his guns’. Should Guan Eng not then be heeding the words of wisdom by the former UMNO Deputy President – who DAP is saying ‘speaks the truth’ – by going on leave?
But that’s the problem – ever since Dato’ Shabudin Yahaya laid bare a possible bungalow-for-land scam in parliament, Guan Eng turned into a verbal gaffe machine. The more he opened his mouth, the bigger were the flubs and the deeper he had his foot in his mouth. And the graphics below proves so.
Simply put, his eight-year squeaky clean and sharp-tongued persona has frayed. Today, the onetime ‘magnanimous’ and infallible leader of the people of Penang has quickly been reduced to ‘that clown whose words are not worth the two cents’.
Shabudin’s Thursday disclosure put the spotlight on a bungalow unit which he revealed was sold to the CM at a ridiculously discounted price. The Member of Parliament for Tasek Gelugor added that the transaction may have been linked to another sale, this time of state land, to a medical concern from Kuala Lumpur at a 50 percent discount.
Over the past two days, both buyer and seller of the controversial bungalow unit have more or less been putting each other’s feet in each other’s mouths. But I’ll get to that in yet another article. Suffice to say, as smart and cunning as Guan Eng thinks he is, Shabudin’s disclosure went a long way to prove a point – that the CM is nothing more than a chip of the old block.
Speaking of the old block – on the 8th of December 2015, the day after Muhyiddin had called for Najib’s leave of absence and 13 days prior to Tuan Ibrahim doing the same, Lim Kit Siang had this to say:
“I fully support Muhyiddin’s proposal that Najib should ‘take a break’ as Prime Minister to allow unimpeded 1MDB investigations and to return as PM after he is cleared of any involvement by the investigation.”
Mind blowing? You got it.
It looks like Guan Eng’s own father is of the opinion that a high-ranking bearer of public office should opt for a leave of absence – in the name of transparency and integrity – in the event that he or she is being investigated for corruption.
Given to public-shaming his rivals, the elder of the two Lims now finds himself on the horns of a very thorny dilemma – either he swallows his pride by confessing that he wrongfully sought Najib’s leave of absence, or he swallows his tongue and sits by while the MACC and the better half of media beats the stuffing out of his son.
As a matter of fact, even Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan and Steven Thiru have since requested Guan Eng to take a leave of absence, which is extraordinary. The two – one a former and the other a current Bar Council president – are known to be staunch DAP supporters and are said to be on the side of history Kit Siang is.
Perhaps they took a look at the calendar and saw a conviction ahead, knowing damn well how Tan Sri Abu Kassim would lead the MACC into a high-powered probe to strip Guan Eng bare and lay his balls on the guillotine. Perhaps, they saw fit to hitch a ride on Abu Kassim’s bandwagon, knowing as well as I do that the anti-graft agency needs badly to prove it isn’t the DAP stooge everyone now thinks it is.
Like I said before – the CM is as good as gone. He sailed too close to the winds of war which is now sweeping him to his watery grave. It’s just a matter of time.
