American media behind Rosmah’s UNESCO award removal
The First Lady to be awarded in recognition of her efforts in developing the potential of children, especially through the Permata programme, however was removed due to American media pressure questioning its funding credibility.
(Malaysia Outlook) – American media Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and New York Times (NYT) had intervened at the eleventh hour in relation to the UNESCO award that was due to be awarded to Malaysia’s First Lady Rosmah Mansor claims Tengku Sarifuddin, press secretary to Prime Minister.
According to Sarifuddin via a statement, on September 18, Malaysia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) received an email from Tudor Parfitt, Chairman of the Academic Advisory Board of the Organising Committee of the Tribute to Contributors to the Global Campaign against Violent Extremism.
In the email, Parfitt stated that WSJ and NYT started to query about Permata funding which later resulted the award to be deferred to 2017.
Prior to that on September 8, Irina Bokova in her capacity as Director General of UNESCO sent letters to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, his wife Rosmah Mansor and Foreign Minister Anifah Aman.
In the letter it was stated that Rosmah was to be given a special tribute award at an event co-hosted by UNESCO on September 22 due to her efforts undertaken by the Malaysian government to counter extremism through the educational system, and specifically the approach taken by Permata which was founded in 2007.
According to Sarifuddin Permata is wholly funded by the Malaysian government under an allocation transparently included in our annual government Budget and approved by Parliament.
All expenditures are in accordance with government financial procedures. This is not only a matter of public record, but could have been immediately explained had we or Permata been asked before the award deferment, pointed out Sarifuddin.
