Wednesday July 2, 2008
Parameswaran displeased with article in ‘Today’ that runs down Rosmah

SINGAPORE: Newspapers here should treat with much more circumspection or prudence allegations or innuendoes that clearly seek to damage the character and reputation of important Malaysian personalities, said the Malaysian High Commissioner to Singapore Datuk N. Parameswaran.

It was personalities who determined the state of relations between Malaysia and Singapore, he said in response to a news report published in a local tabloid, Today, last Friday which vilified the character of Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

The report, headlined Under fire – the First Lady-in-waiting written by journalist Jessinta Tan, cited one A. L. Tan of Kuala Lumpur and another Agnes Teh of Penang.

Tan and Teh were quoted in the report as putting Rosmah in poor light.

Today is Singapore’s free newspaper under the stable of MediaCorp, a government-linked company, with a readership of about half a million daily.

In a letter sent to the Editorial Director of MediaCorp Press, P. N. Balji, yesterday, a copy of which was made available to Bernama, Parameswaran said Rosmah was no ordinary person and “to attempt to establish a public opinion on her based on the sources mentioned above is surely a naughty line to take”.

Parameswaran said that since he was posted as the Malaysian High Commissioner to Singapore in 2003, he had met and interacted with Najib, who was often accompanied by Rosmah and sometimes also by their children, on 15 visits to the city-state, both official as well as private.

Never had he found Rosmah to be portrayed as suggested in the article, he said, adding that Najib’s wife was always warm towards his officers and himself, and was always enquiring about their welfare.

Parameswaran also said that on all their visits to Singapore never had Najib nor Rosmah imposed on the High Commission on any matter related to their private programme.

“Furthermore, my officers and I know full well that the private programmes of all of our VIPs should always be treated as strictly private,” he added.

The High Commissioner said that when he was posted here the relations between Malaysia and Singapore were really at a low ebb.

“But it was personalities of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and (Singapore) Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who made possible the positive changes that had taken place in the bilateral relations between Malaysia and Singapore,” he said.

Parameswaran said that since then other personalities too, both in Malaysia and Singapore, had contributed much to bringing bilateral relations to the “very warm level that they found themselves in today”.

“I would be sad if I learn next year that Datuk Seri Najib finds himself not in a position to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue (an annual event organised here by the Britain-based International Institute for Strategic Studies) which he has attended five times since its inception, or if I learn that Najib’s family had decided to spend their holidays elsewhere,” he said. – Bernama