Money Can Buy Anything In America!

RAJA SARA PETRA

Most Malaysians do not understand the political system in the United States of America. America was built on money and everything in America is about money. You can even buy support in America. It is legal to buy support in America and there are many firms offering this service. This business is called lobbying.

If you can afford the price you can even pay experts to help you become the President of the United States. All it takes is money, and plenty of it. And the people who work for you must be the best that money can buy, and therefore also the most expensive in the business.

Say you want America to ban Malaysian palm oil. For the right amount of money the lobby firm can plan your campaign and get enough lawmakers in Congress or the Senate to get Malaysian palm oil banned. You can even get America to condemn Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as being anti-semitic or anti-Jew.

Therefore the announcement by the US Department of Justice or DOJ last week is no surprise. After all it is just an announcement and many countries such as the US, UK, EU, Australia, and so on, have come out with statements and announcements for almost 20 years condemning the jailing of Anwar Ibrahim on charges of sodomy.

They labelled Anwar as a prisoner of conscience and said that his jailing was politically motivated. They ignored the fact that sodomy is a crime in Malaysia so Anwar actually committed a crime and was jailed for that crime.

After all it is the law of that land so why should Malaysia interfere in and condemn laws of a foreign country? In Malaysia, Muslims can marry more than one wife but you go to jail for that in some other countries. And it is not for Malaysia to oppose that. So why should other countries condemn Malaysia for implementing its laws?

But then other countries do. They condemn Malaysia for laws such as the ISA. Then they use anti-terrorist laws to detain Muslims without trial on allegations of terrorism. It is okay when they detain people without trial but it is not okay if Malaysia were to do the same.

Those are the double standards the west is practicing. And now the DOJ makes an announcement to undermine Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak. But we know they are doing this because someone lobbied them to do it. And we also know that this lobby cost a huge sum of money. If you spend RM100 million in lobby costs you can get them to say anything you like. You can even get them to say that Hang Tuah was actually an Apache Native American who sailed to Melaka more than 500 years ago. That is America.