TV PAKATAN RAKYAT

Anwar Ibrahim


Mat Sabu


PKR insisted that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had asked for World Bank loans, as the then prime minister had chaired the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) that made the requests. The former prime minister said yesterday Malaysia had taken World Bank loans from 1958 to 1999, but that he never personally asked for such funds. PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli made available documents purportedly from the World Bank, and pointed out that funds were disbursed for the July 1998 National Economic Recovery Plan (NERP), which was drawn up by the NEAC. “It is clearly proven the request for financial aid from the World Bank was made by the NEAC, on behalf of the Malaysian government, to pay for the NERP that was launched in July 1998. The NEAC was fully controlled by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad,” he said in an attached statement.

He added the documents showed the negotiation process began in February 1, 1999, “after Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was jailed” on charges of corruption. Anwar was found guilty and sentenced to six years’ jail on April 14, 1999, seven months after being sacked from the government by Dr Mahathir. Rafizi also claimed that loans worth US$404 million (or RM1.5 billion at the exchange rate then) in total were requested under Dr Mahathir’s orders. Dr Mahathir has been locked in a verbal war over the past week with his then deputy Anwar and PKR leaders over their respective roles and actions during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. The former Umno president, who is still influential in the party, issued a challenge last week to Opposition Leader Anwar over allegations of a purported letter that the former had written to the World Bank to appeal for funds during the financial crisis.

PKR has since produced World Bank records showing that Dr Mahathir’s administration had accepted financial aid numerous times from May 18, 1982 to Malaysia’s post-financial crisis period of March 30, 1999. This includes three loans for projects inked six months after Anwar was sacked as deputy prime minister in September 1998. Previously, Dr Mahathir said the last negotiation for loans was in 1997, but the funds were not disbursed until 1999. ~themalaysianinsider.com~

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Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim sounded warning bells today, saying the government’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) will worsen income disparity and force some 1.7 million Malaysians into poverty by 2020. On the flip side, he said, corporate giants and government cronies would be enjoying a larger slice of the economic pie even as the common Malaysian struggle with hardship. The former finance minister poured doubt over the projections in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s ETP introduced last year, claiming that instead of reducing the number of low-income workers and increasing the number of high-paying jobs, the initiative would only see the number of urban poor climb.

By 2020, he said, there will be between seven and 8.3 million urban poor in Malaysia, with monthly earnings of RM1,500 and below. The average Malaysian’s stake in the economy, he added, would also deplete significantly under the programme. “In the final analysis, [the] ETP is a continuation of a flawed economic model mired with corruption and rent-seeking culture that rewards the ruling echelons at the expense of the majority,” he told a dinner talk tonight in his keynote address entitled, “Debunking ETP: Widening income gap” at The Westin. Anwar noted that the ETP projects a salary distribution for 2020 that will see an additional 2.8 million people earning more than RM4,000 per month.

But, he said, the trend of slow growth in real wages here would only turn this projection into a “falsehood”. He noted that statistics from the Human Resources Ministry revealed that wages growth in Malaysia recorded an average increase of 2.6 per cent annually for the past decade while “cost of living has outpaced the wages growth”. “This is further verified by the National Employment Return Study of 2009, involving a sample of 24,000 employers and 1.3 million workers which found that 33.8 per cent of the workers were paid below RM700 per month.

“If this were to be extrapolated nationally, it suggests that up to 34 per cent of our workforce earn below the national poverty line,” he said. Another flaw in the assumption used for the ETP, said Anwar, is the 2.8 per cent average inflation for the period up to 2020 which contributes to the programme’s GNI (gross national income) per capita target of RM48,000 by 2020. If inflation grows higher than 2.8 per cent in the next few years, he said, real wages will be lower and the GNI per capita target is nothing more than “a number on a fancy ETP brochure”. “The consequence that these flawed economic assumptions has on ETP is great. The premise that ETP can guarantee higher wages and deliver Malaysia to the path of high-income nation collapses instantly if we were to use more realistic assumptions detached from political spins and propaganda,” he said. ~themalaysianinsider.com~

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Shortly after the prosecution filed its closing arguments Tuesday and declared that it had proven beyond reasonable doubt that Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, was guilty of sodomy, Mr. Anwar emerged from the Kuala Lumpur High Court to cries of “Reform!” from his supporters. “I still hope that sanity and justice will prevail and the judge will have to decide based on the facts and the law,” said Mr. Anwar, who faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty, said as he left the courtroom.

The trial, which has extended over nearly two years, is expected to end on Thursday with a reply from the defense. Mr. Anwar will then face an anxious wait for a verdict that could prevent him from running in elections widely expected to be held next year and realizing his long-held ambition to become prime minister. Sodomy, even between consenting adults, remains a crime in Muslim-majority Malaysia, and any prison sentence would bar Mr. Anwar, 64, from contesting elections for five years from the date of his release. Some analysts, however, predict that a guilty verdict could enhance support for the political opposition and bolster its contention that the trial was politically motivated. The government has denied such assertions.

More than a decade has passed since Mr. Anwar, who served as deputy prime minister from 1993 to 1998, was convicted of earlier charges of abuse of power and sodomy. Released from prison in 2004 after the Federal Court overturned the sodomy conviction, Mr. Anwar now leads an opposition alliance that holds more parliamentary seats than ever after the governing coalition, which has dominated Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957, lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 2008 elections. Mr. Anwar has not backed down from his assertion that he is the victim of a conspiracy and the government his persecutor. And he does not believe that the verdict in the new trial, in which he is charged with forcing a male aide to have sex, will be any different from the first.

A guilty verdict, he says, is a “foregone conclusion.” “Am I prepared?” he said Thursday in an interview at his party’s headquarters. “Yes, I don’t have a choice.” But he added, “Whether I am in jail or convicted or otherwise, reform and change must take place.” Several months after the 2008 elections, Mr. Anwar was charged with sodomizing his former political aide, Saiful Bukhari Azlan, in a Kuala Lumpur apartment. Mr. Anwar has described the allegation as a “blatant and vicious lie.” In final submissions to the court on Tuesday, the prosecution disputed the defense’s claims that DNA evidence considered crucial in the trial could have been tainted. The prosecution said Mr. Anwar had failed to refute key elements of Mr. Saiful’s testimony when he delivered a statement from the dock. Because he did not give evidence under oath, Mr. Anwar was not subject to cross-examination.

Mr. Anwar’s lawyers, who have complained that the trial has not been conducted fairly, had sought to paint his accuser as a “consummate liar.” Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have criticized the trial. Condemnation has also come from Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president who, with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy secretary of defense, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year that the trial “threatens not just Mr. Anwar but all those in Malaysia who have struggled for a freer and more democratic nation.” But for all his pessimism about his chances of acquittal, Mr. Anwar voices equal optimism about the opposition’s prospects in the next election: “Not if — when,” he said.

James Chin, a political scientist and director of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University Malaysia, said that a guilty verdict would lend credence to the opposition’s assertions that the trial was a government conspiracy. “If he gets a guilty verdict and a very harsh sentence, this will be a very good thing for the opposition,” Mr. Chin said. Bridget Welsh, an associate professor at Singapore Management University who specializes in Malaysian politics, said a guilty verdict would support the view that the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak “is so insecure that it has to use the judiciary against the opposition leader.”

While the opposition has often been beset by claims of disunity in its ranks, Mr. Anwar said the parties had been working to come up with a “clear platform” on key policies ahead of the election. “Our target is to win the elections,” Mr. Anwar said. “I’m very optimistic.” He said the opposition must present a coherent, united voice and emphasize its commitment to democratic reforms, and communicate its message to the public — something Mr. Anwar complained was difficult because of the government dominance of television and newspapers. Calls for greater protection of civil liberties have grown louder in Malaysia this year, and Mr. Najib has announced that he will undertake a series of legislative changes. But his actions have failed to satisfy the Malaysian Bar Council and other rights advocates, with many criticizing the government’s new Peaceful Assembly Act. Although the act would eliminate the need to obtain a police permit for protests, it would ban street demonstrations and require protesters to notify the police in advance.

Mr. Anwar, who said he would allow street protests if elected, said Malaysia has the ingredients for its own “Arab spring” if changes are not made. He said Malaysia was not comparable to Libya under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime or Syria under President Bashar al-Assad. But, he said, “all the ingredients of a repressive regime, an authoritarian regime, are there.” As Mr. Anwar awaits the verdict, he said he would be traveling around the country, meeting members of the public to garner support for the opposition. He said that, if he is jailed, he believes the government “will just try and erase me as they did before in 1998, because they thought by just jailing me that Anwar’s role and future is erased for good.” But he left no doubt that he would not go quietly if convicted. In a courtroom speech delivered during the trial, he vowed that the “truth will eventually prevail.” “Come what come may,” he said, “I shall never surrender.” ~New York Times~