A fair summary of the sorts of shenanigans everybody in Malaysia, and outside of that openly corrupt and racist country, knows about even before the so-called media in Malaysia gets wind of anything of the sort. Some in Malaysia's legal fraternity have inside knowledge of these affairs but most, I have found over many years, make stuff out if it gets their name in the press that may help advertise their legal business. One thing one quickly realizes about Malaysia is one takes everything one is told by those who think they are in the know, so to speak, with a ship-load of salt.
All that said, it would not be so far fetched to suggest Anwar Ibrahim, who is clinging to power with the backing of Umno -- a party of Malay crooks and liars (not dissimilar to the self-aggrandizing Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress) -- may well be taking revenge on anything that relates to the vile racist fascist Mahathir Mohamad and his long-time cronies, including Daim Zainuddin, for "thwarting" Anwar's early attempts to rise to the top of Malaysian politics and supplant the likes of Mahathir in the most humiliating way possible to the latter. Don't forget the deep humiliation Anwar Ibrahim has suffered at the hands of Mahathir and his scummy backers, all of them washed by greed that stems from the ongoing racist New Economic Policy of 1970 -- a policy, to be frank, that has failed rural Malays by exploiting them ideologically and by false religious facades, a policy that has failed in its economic redistributive justice aims whilst enriching those urban Malays indubitably tied to UMNO and Malay state capital. Domestic Chinese capital works on its own political and business peculiarities but at least it is more dynamic and "progressive" than Malay capital which remains predominantly ersatz and breeds manic corruption between Malay parties, the Malay state and Malay state capital (the so-called government-linked companies).
Yet it is strange -- even weird -- not to ask the extent to which Anwar Ibrahim and his Parti Keadilan Rakyat have also forged the specter of cronyism if one understands, at a critical analytical level, the nature of Malaysia's political economy. It would be illusory, in my view, that so much change has taken place in Malaysian political economy and the riddles of "Malaysian capitalism", if that is what it is called, that Anwar is without his cabal of cronies when, clearly, he seems to have shied well away from undertaking real political and economic reforms and, more, the continued power-play of patronage politics in urban Malaysia and patron-client relations in rural Malaysia. Just as Mahathir conducted "protection racket", it would be interesting to see the extent to which Anwar is running the same (I strongly suspect that he is, inevitably).
At one level, the Daim Zainuddin saga is also the Mahathir Mohamd sage and more than just "corruption" in Malaysia which, as the bulk of the world's major investors already know, is a given, historically and contemporaneously. Just as 1997-98 showed, and again between 2018-2020, this "war" between Anwar and Mahathir and Daim, is personal. It's vendetta politics, to put it crudely. At another level, it is a battle to ease the throttle back on "reformasi" reforms and, I would suggest, to cancel them, for obvious reasons. And if you think about it, Anwar Ibrahim is doing the Xi Jinping thing: attack corruption of his "big fish" enemies in the name of cleaning up the system, only, ironically, the system is not being cleansed because Anwar, like Xi, has little to no clue how to fix not just the economy but the whole political economy. And it will never -- never -- begin with redistributive policies.
By the way, Malaysiakini is hardly -- barely -- an "independent" media company given its horrendous and obvious longstanding bias favoring the Democratic Action Party.
It would be interesting to know under what ordnance or statute they would charge Diam and Mizran. Malaysia's legislative drafting is something to behold. There are no laws against accumulating money in Malaysia and the word corruption has no legal definition in Malaysian law. But then again we are referring to Malaysia, a country where the rule of law is hardly understood by its legal fraternity and its legislatures.
As for the ICIJ, I would question its integrity and independence when considering it is funded in part by the NED and by George Soros's open societies foundation.
One way to Sherlock Holmes like connect-the-dots is to crowdsource evidence gathering.
By having those aggrieved by lawyers and Commercial Crime inertness to be anonymous whistle-blowers.
And to use Generative AI to raise theses and rank likelihood.
Then focus on the best bets.
I started the first online community at Sangkancil@Malaysia.Net that featured my fellow ex-Reuter correspondent MGG Pillai. We walked in this direction. It can be rekindled.
A fair summary of the sorts of shenanigans everybody in Malaysia, and outside of that openly corrupt and racist country, knows about even before the so-called media in Malaysia gets wind of anything of the sort. Some in Malaysia's legal fraternity have inside knowledge of these affairs but most, I have found over many years, make stuff out if it gets their name in the press that may help advertise their legal business. One thing one quickly realizes about Malaysia is one takes everything one is told by those who think they are in the know, so to speak, with a ship-load of salt.
All that said, it would not be so far fetched to suggest Anwar Ibrahim, who is clinging to power with the backing of Umno -- a party of Malay crooks and liars (not dissimilar to the self-aggrandizing Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress) -- may well be taking revenge on anything that relates to the vile racist fascist Mahathir Mohamad and his long-time cronies, including Daim Zainuddin, for "thwarting" Anwar's early attempts to rise to the top of Malaysian politics and supplant the likes of Mahathir in the most humiliating way possible to the latter. Don't forget the deep humiliation Anwar Ibrahim has suffered at the hands of Mahathir and his scummy backers, all of them washed by greed that stems from the ongoing racist New Economic Policy of 1970 -- a policy, to be frank, that has failed rural Malays by exploiting them ideologically and by false religious facades, a policy that has failed in its economic redistributive justice aims whilst enriching those urban Malays indubitably tied to UMNO and Malay state capital. Domestic Chinese capital works on its own political and business peculiarities but at least it is more dynamic and "progressive" than Malay capital which remains predominantly ersatz and breeds manic corruption between Malay parties, the Malay state and Malay state capital (the so-called government-linked companies).
Yet it is strange -- even weird -- not to ask the extent to which Anwar Ibrahim and his Parti Keadilan Rakyat have also forged the specter of cronyism if one understands, at a critical analytical level, the nature of Malaysia's political economy. It would be illusory, in my view, that so much change has taken place in Malaysian political economy and the riddles of "Malaysian capitalism", if that is what it is called, that Anwar is without his cabal of cronies when, clearly, he seems to have shied well away from undertaking real political and economic reforms and, more, the continued power-play of patronage politics in urban Malaysia and patron-client relations in rural Malaysia. Just as Mahathir conducted "protection racket", it would be interesting to see the extent to which Anwar is running the same (I strongly suspect that he is, inevitably).
At one level, the Daim Zainuddin saga is also the Mahathir Mohamd sage and more than just "corruption" in Malaysia which, as the bulk of the world's major investors already know, is a given, historically and contemporaneously. Just as 1997-98 showed, and again between 2018-2020, this "war" between Anwar and Mahathir and Daim, is personal. It's vendetta politics, to put it crudely. At another level, it is a battle to ease the throttle back on "reformasi" reforms and, I would suggest, to cancel them, for obvious reasons. And if you think about it, Anwar Ibrahim is doing the Xi Jinping thing: attack corruption of his "big fish" enemies in the name of cleaning up the system, only, ironically, the system is not being cleansed because Anwar, like Xi, has little to no clue how to fix not just the economy but the whole political economy. And it will never -- never -- begin with redistributive policies.
By the way, Malaysiakini is hardly -- barely -- an "independent" media company given its horrendous and obvious longstanding bias favoring the Democratic Action Party.
It would be interesting to know under what ordnance or statute they would charge Diam and Mizran. Malaysia's legislative drafting is something to behold. There are no laws against accumulating money in Malaysia and the word corruption has no legal definition in Malaysian law. But then again we are referring to Malaysia, a country where the rule of law is hardly understood by its legal fraternity and its legislatures.
As for the ICIJ, I would question its integrity and independence when considering it is funded in part by the NED and by George Soros's open societies foundation.
One way to Sherlock Holmes like connect-the-dots is to crowdsource evidence gathering.
By having those aggrieved by lawyers and Commercial Crime inertness to be anonymous whistle-blowers.
And to use Generative AI to raise theses and rank likelihood.
Then focus on the best bets.
I started the first online community at Sangkancil@Malaysia.Net that featured my fellow ex-Reuter correspondent MGG Pillai. We walked in this direction. It can be rekindled.