It was Guan Eng who killed MACC’s Shukri
Guan Eng is as good as dead meat. But then he might still escape if DAP is prepared to wash their hands off Anwar Ibrahim and throw him under a bus. So, in the end, it will be Anwar’s head for Guan Eng’s head. And Lim Kit Siang might just agree to this trade-off to save the Lim dynasty. I love Malaysian politics.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Everyone is talking about Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s “unilateral” action of appointing Latheefa Koya as the new MACC chief to replace Mohd Shukri Abdull.
The talk is focused on whether Latheefa is independent enough to do her job without prejudice or whether Mahathir did the right thing by doing whatever he likes without referring to the Cabinet or the Pakatan Harapan Council first.
Actually, that is not the subject we should be discussing. What we should be discussing instead is who urged Mahathir to remove Shukri and replace him with Latheefa, a lawyer from the law firm Daim & Gamany?
Guan Eng used Shukri to try to sabotage Daim’s trip to China and Daim was furious
The whole thing started in July last year. Malaysia wanted to re-negotiate the ECRL project with China but the Chinese refused to meet Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng because he had accused the Chinese of collaborating with Najib Tun Razak to cheat 1MDB. It is said they even refused to approve his visa, let alone meet him to discuss the ECRL.
Mahathir had no choice but to send Tun Daim Zainuddin instead and this made Guan Eng very unhappy. He wanted to be the hero who goes to China to squeeze the balls of the Chinese and get them to drop their price on the ECRL. Now Daim is going to be that hero instead.
So Guan Eng asked Shukri to conduct raids on certain Chinese companies involved with various projects, the ECRL included, so that Daim’s trip to China can be sabotaged. The Chinese were slighted and they gave Daim the cold shoulder.
Will Latheefa finish off Guan Eng?
Daim was furious. He phoned Shukri and told the MACC boss, “If you want to slap my face then wait for me to come back to Malaysia.” At that point Shukri knew he had blundered and that Guan Eng had used him to sabotage Daim’s trip to China.
The rest was merely a matter of timing. Shukri’s fate had been sealed. Guan Eng had used him to try to kill Daim and now he is going to die instead.
Daim, of course, knew that Guan Eng was behind the whole thing and that it was Guan Eng who asked Shukri to raid the Chinese companies. In the end the MACC discovered nothing, of course, because there was nothing there in the first place.
DAP might trade Anwar’s head for Guan Eng’s head
Daim will make sure that Guan Eng pays for his treachery. The new MACC chief will have to revisit the house and tunnel scandals plus look into a third corruption case that Guan Eng is involved in.
Guan Eng is as good as dead meat. But then he might still escape if DAP is prepared to wash their hands off Anwar Ibrahim and throw him under a bus. So, in the end, it will be Anwar’s head for Guan Eng’s head. And Lim Kit Siang might just agree to this trade-off to save the Lim dynasty. I love Malaysian politics.
*************************************************************
Malaysia stumbles in rapprochement with China
Raids on Chinese state-owned firms by KL’s anti-graft agency throw spanner in the works
Leslie Lopez, Straits Times, Singapore 22 July 2018
Malaysia’s bid to reset its testy relations with China hit a nasty bump last week.
A carefully planned high-level bilateral pow-wow in Beijing was thrown off the tracks by a set of synchronised anti-corruption raids here on two China state-owned entities handling billions of dollars in infrastructure projects.
*************************************************************
MACC raids offices linked to three major projects, including ECRL
New Straits Times, 18 July 2018
Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) officers have seized documents linked to the Multi-product Pipeline (MPP), Trans-Sabah Gas Pipeline (TSGP) and East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) projects in raids at 13 locations in the Klang Valley today.
Sources said 50 MACC investigators were involved in the raids at several offices linked to the projects. The raids began at 10am and took several hours to complete.
