Photo credit: China Press
Bala (left) when making the first SD
Bala (right) when making the second SD
Remind me to avoid fish-head curry in Brickfields.
Bala and family have now gone missing and are out of contact, says his worried nephew, who has lodged a police report. Meanwhile, Najib has denied any involvement in Bala’s retraction of his first SD. “I have no knowledge of anything,” said the deputy premier.
He had friendly phone chat with ASP who wanted to congratulate him for first SD, says lawyer
(Press statements by Americk and Sivarasah)
At a press conference now going on at 5.30pm, P Balasubramaniam’s lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu has cast doubt on the private eye’s second statutory declaration.
After spending hours with Bala taking notes of his testimony previously and being familiar with his character, Americk said, “I am very sceptical that he has signed the second statutory declaration of his own free will and I am convinced he has been intimidated to do so by either threats or promises, as I can think of no other reason.”
He said Bala had signed the first declaration in front of a commissioner of oaths – someone whom Bala recognised as having grown up in the same Slim River neighbourhood as himself – on his own free will.
“I am therefore extremely surprised that Mr. Bala, in the space of 24 hours, has engaged the services of another lawyer and affirmed another statutory declaration swearing the first one was untrue and that he was forced to sign it,” said Americk.
The last Americk saw Bala was in Americk’s office after the press conference. Bala said the police were trying to contact him over the phone. Americk then told Bala to talk to them since they were trying to reach him.
Hmm… what is going on here?
The PI, Balasubramaniam, wants to retract his statutory declaration yesterday and has come up with a new one. The address of the commissioner of oaths who witnessed the new declaration is reportedly the same as that of a legal firm owned by the brother of the Federal Territory Minister.
Was busy today rushing out an article for Asia Times (see below).
In the meantime, as Mustafa has pointed out here, the mainstream media online have been very… apa nama … “shy” in reporting Anwar’s and Balasubramaniam’s allegations – until Najib came out with his denial. Funny, they didn’t display the same reticence when reporting Saiful’s allegation on Sunday morning. I noticed on the front page of the Sunday Star that Anwar was said to be “fighting for his political credibility” in the wake of Saiful’s report. I wonder if they will say the same thing of Najib now.
Najib has now dismissed all the allegations as “malicious lies”. He maintains he has never met the woman and Anwar is trying to divert attention from the sodomy allegations. See the NST here. Najib seems keen to lob the “ball” back to the sodomy allegations.
Where is all this leading to? Taking a step back and looking at the larger picture, I believe this high-stakes “tennis match” (lob and counter-lob) symbolises the battle between the new political order and the old, the tsunami vs the hegemony. I don’t think it is a healthy development though, for politics to be so personalised. The tsunami movement for reforms and change is too broad-based to be focused on individuals at the apex slugging it out for their political survival – but there you go.
Anyway, here’s the article I wrote:
The stakes have just got higher. No, they have shot through the roof!
In a sensational development, Anwar has revealed that a former cop has come up with a statutory declaration implicating Najib and others in the Altantuya case. Former police officer-turned private eye, P Balasubramaniam claimed that it was Najib who introduced Altantuya to Abdul Razak Baginda at a diamond exhibition in Singapore and that the Mongolian woman was promised US$500,000 as commission for a submarine deal in Paris. Balasubramaniam was engaged by Baginda as a private investigator.
Click here for Anwar’s statement in full.
Click here for Balasubramaniam’s statutory declaration.
The Malaysia Today website has been hacked and defaced. Now it’s simply not downloading as Raja Petra is having difficulty restoring it due to a poor Streamyx connection.
A couple of days ago, the Aliran website came under bombardment with close to 60,000 hits coming from two unknown IP addresses within the space of a few minutes. “The account was being attacked,” said the webhosting network security administrator. As a result, he temporarily disabled the website and and restored it hours later, after blocking those IPs.
On 19 June, Mahathir’s chedet.com website was “locked” because it was deemed to be a “suspected spam blog”. His webmaster was forced to change the domain name from www.chedet.com to test.chedet.com
Tanjung Bunga fisherfolk still waiting for proper homes
When the tsunami slammed into our shores, claiming scores of victims, many Malaysians donated generously in cash and in kind. But, four years later, a dozen fisherfolk in Tanjong Bunga, living in a “temporary” longhouse, are still waiting for alternative housing. Where has all the tsunami money gone, they wonder.
It’s already 2 July, and still no sign of Petronas’ results for the financial year ended 31 March 2008.
I hope the government or top management are not waiting for the big 6 July oil price hike protest to be over first.
In previous years, Petronas announced its financial results to the media by the end of June.
Do you know that 24 per cent of Malaysian households are struggling to make ends meet, earning less than RM1,500 a month? The figure would be higher if you define “low income” as households with a monthly income of below RM2,000. Check out this report in NST:
THE country’s poverty rate will increase from 3.7 per cent to 24.3 per cent if the poverty line is raised from the current RM800 to RM1,500 per household.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Amirsham A. Aziz said the definition of the poverty line was a household income sufficient for basic necessities. It does not include luxury items.
The basics are food, clothes and other expenses like rental, utilities, transport and communication, health, education and recreation.
“In short, the poverty line provides no room for luxuries like sending children to private schools or tuition classes, receiving treatment from private clinics or having their meals outside,” Amirsham said in reply to a question by Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim (PKR-Bandar Tun Razak).
However, the poverty line would be updated from time to time, taking into account the prevailing inflation rate.
The government had redefined the low-income group as people earning less than RM2,000 a month.
These are the households that are feeling the brunt of oil price and electricity tariff hikes.
Contrast their household income with the remuneration of the Tenaga Nasional Bhd CEO, who earns over RM1 million per year:
Basic salary RM600,000
Bonus RM302,000
EPF contribution RM113,280
Car allowance RM42,000
Flexible benefits RM50,000
Total RM1,107,280
Figures are from TNB’s 2007 Annual Report.