Lawyer Shafee Abdullah has urged Azalina Othman Said to review Anwar Ibrahim’s past remarks on enforcement agencies, emphasising the prime minister’s role in the trust deficit.
“In particular, examine his and other Pakatan Harapan leaders’ statements about the current stand of MACC.
“You don’t need to look too far back – just refer to the comments made by MACC before the last general election.
“Then, you will better understand why my client opted to turn to the media instead of enforcement agencies,” he told Malaysiakini.
Shafee, who is representing the whistleblower on an ex gratia basis in the alleged Sabah corruption scandal, was responding to the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (law and institutional reform) stating that whistleblowers must turn to the enforcement agencies instead of the media…
When in the opposition, Anwar and Harapan leaders often accused enforcement agencies of being political tools of the government – used to target rivals and critics while shielding the transgressions of ruling politicians.
It is certainly refreshing to see the lawyer so identified in the past with defending crooks in office now throwing the same arguments back from the opposition that were used against those crooks incumbents at the time.
And with so much apparent justification.
Shafee makes the point that in opposition PKR and its allies denounced the practice of selective law enforcement by the so-called independent anti-corruption agencies on behalf of those in office, be it UMNO or Bersatu.
At the same time as they pursued their adversaries, he says these parties ‘shielded’ their own political allies from righteous investigations.
One very good example would surely be the scandalous Musa Aman, the former UMNO Chief Minister of Sabah under Shafee’s client prime minister Najib Razak, who had secretly received millions into his personal accounts (transferred to Zurich) which Najib’s government chose to categorise as ‘legitimate political donations’ once they had been exposed.
Musa panicked and fled after voters threw him out responding to that scandal, and the PH government and its enforcement agencies eventually brought him home to face a slew of rightful charges about those cash for concessions backhanders which had gone nowhere near the party (and would not have been legitimised had they done so).
However, these charges were dropped when UMNO returned to office through its backdoor coup.
Forward now to Anwar, who once rightly deplored such abuse of public anti-corruption agencies and the subservient role of the AG.
Now that he holds office largely thanks to a post-election coalition deal with Musa Aman’s Sabah and UMNO allies, we see him seemingly adopting the exact same tactics to protect his mates and political interests – ‘shielding’ Musa and his allies as Shafee puts it.
The tainted ex-CM himself has been elevated as Governor of the state (making him, like Taib Mahmud, immune from prosecution for jaw dropping larceny whilst in office).
Meanwhile, Musa’s own son in law, together with a slew of political allies who have been caught neck deep in the latest corruption revelations, are apparently being mysteriously protected from any official investigation despite the mounting heaps of evidence.
Shafee, having once denied this disgraceful practice on behalf of previous incumbents in office who were his clients, is now admitting to it on behalf of clients in the opposition. Malaysians have known it all along and once more they are likely to resort to their only available punishment for such scandalous behaviour.
They will exert it at the ballot box.