Using his name in vain

Using his name in vain
21 Dec, 2008

Many a time the government and police use the name of the Sultan to perpetuate violence, like in Batu Burok, Terengganu, where two people were shot during a BERSIH rally, and to deny us our fundamental rights. It is time this stopped. But it will not stop unless we fight back.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I remember, back in the 1980s, at the height of the second Constitutional Crisis, the late Sultan of Terengganu almost incurred the wrath of the people. The current Agong was then the Raja Muda of Terengganu. And how it happened was as follows.

The Terengganu state government had been awarding more than RM100 million worth of state government contracts to one particular company. This company was owned by Dato’ Yong, Dato’ Azhar and Dato’ Yusof. RM100 million, about 20 years ago, is probably worth RM500 million or more today considering a BMW 7 series or Mercedes S class cost only RM80,000 at that time.

I spoke to the Director of the Public Works Department (JKR) and he complained that the work was not only ‘negotiated without tender’, but they were awarded to this company at more than double the estimated price. And that was why a mere fencing job, which could be done for RM500,000, was being awarded at a price of RM1.6 million.

I checked with the architect and quantity surveyor and they ‘opened up the books’ to show me how the ‘negotiated without tender’ contracts were all awarded at double the price. Therefore, the contracts totalling RM116 million should have been awarded to the company at RM50 million or so -- and, even then, at RM50 million they would still be making money as the cost had been estimated at around RM40 million.

In short, the company was making about RM66 million on these jobs totalling RM116 million and at today’s purchasing power we can easily and conservatively estimate that as more than RM300 million in ‘clean’ profits.

I was perturbed. I decided to raise this matter in the Malay Chamber of Commerce meeting and it was agreed that we would make a representation to meet the Menteri Besar, Wan Mokhtar Ahmad. I went along with the delegation to meet the Menteri Besar in his office.

The Menteri Besar explained that there was nothing he could do about it. He had received, he said, a surat kuning (yellow letter) from the palace to award these contracts to the company owned by the three Datuks. What Wan Mokhtar failed to mention is that there is a fourth Datuk who is the ‘secret shareholder’ of this company. And this fourth Datuk was none other than Wan Mokhtar himself.

Now do you know why Wan Mokhtar, Dato’ Yong, Dato’ Azhar and Dato’ Yusof were known as ‘The Gang of Four’? And Wan Mokhtar played the role of ‘Madam Mao’ as in the infamous Gang of Four from China.

I went to meet Shahidan Kassim, then the Parliament Backbenchers Club Chairman, and told him the whole story. Shahidan, in turn, raised the matter with the Deputy Prime Minister, Ghafar Baba, who made a press statement that was carried on the front pages of the Malay newspapers.

Terengganu went into panic mode.

Wan Mokhtar called for an emergency public meeting and invited more than 1,000 Malay businessmen to attend the ‘conference’. In this meeting, he explained that the opposition was trying to bring down the government by triggering a conflict between the government and the palace. He accused this group of lying that they had met him and that he had revealed in this meeting he received a surat kuning from the palace. He profusely denied making such a statement and denied he had received a surat kuning from the palace.

I was identified as the dalang (puppet master) behind this ‘conspiracy to trigger a clash between the government and the palace’ and Umno Youth subsequently ousted me from the Malay Chamber of Commerce. The Umno Youth personalities were Wan Hisham (brother of Wan Farid, the candidate for the 17 January 2009 Kuala Terengganu by-election), Wan Bakri, Nasir Ibrahim Fikri, etc., and led, of course, by Wan Mokhtar, the Menteri Besar and head of the Wan clan of Terengganu.

We found out later that the palace had, indeed, not issued any ‘yellow letter’ and that Wan Mokhtar was, in fact, the partner of these three Datuks. The palace had been used to siphon out more than RM100 million worth of government money, which, at today’s prices, could easily be five times that amount.

Some years back, the Selangor State Government sacked about seven imams from various mosques all over Selangor on what they said was the instructions of the Selangor palace. My brother and I investigated this matter and found out that the Selangor religious department had complained to the Sultan that these imams were anti-royalty and had used the mosques to spread hate against the Sultan. The religious department asked for the Sultan’s consent to remove these imams, which the Sultan consented to.

The religious department then sacked the imams and said that this was done on the instructions of the Sultan of Selangor. My brother and I were of course extremely perturbed because we personally knew some of these imams and we knew for a fact (since we had gone to pray at these mosques a number of times) that this was not true. The truth was, these imams were PAS members and Umno wanted them removed and they were using the Sultan’s name to do this.

Now, the CPO of Selangor, said that the police took action against the JERIT cyclists because the Sultan of Selangor was not happy that the opposition was using children for political ends. Did the Sultan personally meet the ‘children’ and personally check their birth certificates to verify their ages and got confirmation from reliable sources that the ‘children’ were in fact ‘being used’ by the opposition? Or, is the CPO, just like in so many incidences before this over the last 30 years, using the Sultan’s name, as usual?

Yes, it seems the Sultan told the CPO just before His Highness left for an overseas trip that he is not happy the opposition is using children and that he told the police to take action. How convenient that the Sultan is overseas when action was taken.

The cycling expedition was endorsed and supported by the Penang, Perak and Selangor State governments. These are the governments of the respective states. They are not opposition. Umno is the opposition in these states. So how can the opposition be using children when Umno is the opposition and it is not Umno that is behind JERIT?

In the early 1990s, I organised a run from Kuala Terengganu to Kuala Lumpur. It took us 48 hours to cover the 500-kilometer distance. The Terengganu state government sponsored the run of 60 runners and the police gave us a police escort the entire duration of the run. 20 of us were from the Terengganu running club, 20 of them were Hashers, and 20 were children (all below 18).

The current Agong, the Terengganu Raja Muda then, flagged off the run and the Federal Territory Minister, Yusof Nor, received us at the Dataran Merdeka, sharp 8.00am on Federal Territory Day, and threw us a party after that. Now, why was the issue of ‘using children’ not raised then? In fact, we were fully backed by the government and police. No one got arrested and we did not even have a police permit for this ‘illegal’ run.

It has become the habit for the government and police to clamp down on those not aligned to Umno while using the palace as the excuse for doing so. “We are just doing what the Sultan ordered,” would be the normal argument. They even use the Sultan’s name to rob us of billions of the rakyat’s money. Podah, we no longer fall for that crap. And we are going to send a petition to the Sultan to protest what the police did. So, please sign the petition and let us get as many signatures as possible. We are going to fight back with a vengeance.