RPK throws the gauntlet on to Muhamad son of Muhamad..
RPK, I hope you don’t mind but I have reproduced the article in its entirety here.
Dear readers, this has been copied from Malaysia Today.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Khairy Jamaluddin, the Prime Minister’s son-in-law, said that he is not scared of facing or engaging Bloggers. Muhammad son of Muhammad, the Information Chief of Umno, said that Bloggers are pengecut (literally translated to mean ‘shrunken testicles’) because our websites are all located overseas where the Malaysian government can’t touch us.
Actually, it is the local hosting companies who have their servers in Cyberjaya who are pengecut. The instant I mention Malaysia Today, none of the local boys would dare touch us, especially those companies owned by Chinese. I mean, when you watch those Kung Fu movies from Hong Kong and one brave soul like Bruce Lee, Chan Kwan Tai, Ti Lung, Jackie Chan, etc., single-handedly take on 100 bad hombres, you would expect that Chinese in real life would be very brave indeed. Alas, this is not the case.
Back in the Reformasi days, I was quite active in producing Reformasi VCDs. However, the Chinese VCD manufacturers that I approached all turned me down. They had no problems if I wanted to produce porn movies, even gay movies or sex-with-animals movies, but not VCDs of Anwar Ibrahim or Reformasi. In the end I found one Chinese manufacturer who would do it but with conditions attached. Firstly, I had to pay for the order in full, in advance. This was so that in the event the police raided their factory and confiscated the VCDs I would bear the loss, not them. Secondly, they would only manufacture them late at night, after midnight, when no one was around. I would then have to take delivery immediately before the factory opened the next morning and all the staff came to work. Thirdly, I would have to meet them in a deserted underground car park where they would transfer the VCDs over to me. They would then drive off while I would have to wait a few minutes before I drive off so that they can safely be miles away in case I got caught.
That is how scared the Chinese are. So please don’t get taken in by those Kung Fu movies of one hero facing 100 evil people and beating these 100 people with just one punch. The Chinese are scared shit. They do not dare get involved in anything perceived as anti-government. They will manufacture porn. They will act as pimps and run brothels. They will traffic in drugs. They will assassinate MCA leaders and underworld leaders (most times they are one and the same). They will run illegal lotteries and gambling operations. They will run loan sharking businesses and burn your house down and kidnap your children if you do not pay. They will rob banks and goldsmith shops. This, they dare do. But they will never manufacture anti-government VCDs. And they will never, ever host Malaysia Today on their servers.
So that, Muhammad son of Muhammad, is the reality of the situation. And the fact that when Harakah was charged (I can’t remember whether it was under the Sedition Act or the Official Secrets Act) some years back, the Editor, the licence holder and the Chinese printer were all also charged. Harakah, the Editor and the licence holder all pleaded not guilty and fought the case in court. The Chinese printer pleaded guilty and quickly paid the fine. He did not dare contest the case.
So you see, Muhammad son of Muhammad, it is not Malaysia Today or Raja Petra Bin Raja Kamarudin that has shrunken testicles. It is the Chinese. And recently, when the government said it would detain that Chinese student in Taiwan and withdraw his citizenship because he has been perceived as insulting our National Anthem, the Chinese testicles shrunk even more. The Chinese realise that criticising the government is not tolerated and they run the risk of not only being detained without trial, but of losing their Malaysian citizenship as well. So of course no Chinese would dare host Malaysia Today, not even for any amount of money. As far as the Chinese are concerned, better they suffer shrunken testicles then they lose their freedom and citizenship on top of that. And the Chinese realise it does not matter whether you did or did not really commit a crime. It is whether the government says that you have. And if the government says you have, then you have, even if you have not. That is how it works in Malaysia.
Anyway, forget about the Chinese and Chinese host companies. I don’t want the Chinese to say that Malaysia Today is now a Chinese-bashing website. I know that the Chinese are not as sensitive as the Malays. The Malays are very sensitive and any criticism is viewed as Malay-bashing or Islam-bashing. This is what they accuse Malaysia Today of. The Chinese are more tolerant. I mean, I can even shake my keris above my head and threaten to bathe it in Chinese blood and they will not make any police report against me. But if I wave a Kung Fu sword above my head and threaten to bathe it in Malay blood there will be hundreds of police reports made against me. Nevertheless, this is not about the Chinese. This is about whether Raja Petra Bin Raja Kamarudin has shrunken testicles and is ‘hiding’ behind the safety of a website based in a foreign company which puts us out of the jurisdiction of Malaysian laws.
I know it is frustrating when the government cannot touch me. Well, I am prepared to make your job easier for you, Muhammad son of Muhammad. I am going to allow you to organise another gathering at the PWTC like you did last Saturday. I am prepared to step onto the stage and face your 2,500 Umno members in a gathering organised by Umno and repeat all my allegations live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters. I will remove the protection that I now have and throw myself to the mercy of the government to do what it wants to me.
I will repeat my allegation live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters, that Umno misused RM600 million of the tax-payers’ money and gave RM3 million to each of the 191 Umno divisions. And to back up my allegation I will table the Minutes of the Umno meeting where the Umno President and Prime Minister said that the RM600 million is for the Umno Divisions and not for the Parliamentary Constituencies. I shall also prove that the 28 Sarawak Divisions were not included in the package because Umno does not have any presence in Sarawak.
I will repeat my allegation live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters, that, when Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was still just the Deputy Prime Minister, he signed a letter recommending his sister-in-law to become one of the beneficiaries of the Iraqi Oil-for-Food program. I shall table the United Nations and United States Congress Reports that implicate Abdullah Badawi in the Oil-for-Food scandal and which state that bribes were paid to Saddam Hussein and/or his government to get this oil quota.
I will repeat my allegation live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters, that Scomi, a company owned by the Prime Minister’s son, is the beneficiary of more than RM1.5 billion worth of Petronas contracts. I shall table the list of contracts with the amounts involved. I shall also table the testimony of one of BSA Tahir’s family members that Abdullah Badawi personally knew Tahir and was in fact quite close to him and used to go to his house for dinner. In case you have forgotten, Muhammad son of Muhammad, BSA Tahir is said to have been detained under the Internal Security Act which is a law used against those perceived as a threat to Malaysia’s national security. I will of course expect you, Muhammad son of Muhammad, to explain in what way Tahir is a threat to Malaysia’s national security that warrants his detention under the Internal Security Act and whether his detention is merely to prevent the Americans from getting him whereby the full story of Abdullah Badawi’s family’s involvement in the nuclear component scandal would become public knowledge.
I will repeat my allegation live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters, that the house in Perth that the Prime Minister and his then girlfriend, Jeanne Danker, stayed at in December last year is registered in the name of Patrick Lim’s wife. I shall table the title deeds to the house to back up my allegation. In case you did not realise, Muhammad son of Muhammad, Patrick Lim is Abdullah Badawi’s son’s business partner whose company is benefiting from the development of the land around the second Penang Bridge that costs RM2 billion but is being built at a price of RM3 billion through a loan from China. And in case you also did not realise, Muhammad son of Muhammad, Patrick Lim is also the man who is the beneficiary of Terengganu’s RM1 billion a year Wang Ehsan which is being used to finance the Monsoon Cup and pay for the development around Pulau Duyung and that all this is being done on a negotiated-without-tender basis under the direct supervision of the Prime Minister’s Department. Rest assured, Muhammad son of Muhammad, I shall table all the photographs to back up my allegation.
I will repeat my allegation live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters, that the Umno Supreme Council made a decision to sabotage Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in last year’s Kubang Pasu division election in violation of the party Constitution and Code of Ethics. I shall table Statutory Declarations or signed Affidavits by some of the delegates to the division meeting plus the police reports they made alleging they were paid RM200 each to not vote for Dr Mahathir. I shall also table another police report by one of the complainants that he was beaten up in his home in front of his family by Umno leaders from his division and that he has identified who they are and that nothing was done on all these police reports thus far even though it is coming to almost a year.
Maybe we can focus on these issues first, Muhammad son of Muhammad. There are certainly many more such as the purchase of the RM200 million Airbus, the sale of MV Augusta for RM4.00, the collapse of Proton and the disappearance of billions of Ringgit of its cash reserves, the Scenic Bridge fiasco, the ECM Libra-Avenue Capital merger, and much more. But maybe I can reserve these for Khairy since he said he wants to meet the Bloggers to engage them in a debate or dialogue.
By the way, Muhammad son of Muhammad, I shall also table the letter you wrote to the late Sultan of Selangor denying you had married his daughter and the second letter you wrote asking for forgiveness plus the marriage certificate from Thailand and other documents related to the matter which I have thus far not published in Malaysia Today. I shall further table documents on the RM800 million loss suffered by the Selangor State government when you badly managed (or maybe purposely engineered) the privatisation of Selangor’s water supply to Puncak Niaga. I shall of course expect you, in turn, to table the Selangor State accounts of those years you were its Menteri Besar to explain what happened to the State’s RM3 billion Ringgit, which seems to have ‘disappeared’.
So you see, Muhammad son of Muhammad, I will not be making all these allegations in a website that is based outside Malaysia in a foreign country. I will be making these allegations live, on Malaysian soil, in the Umno headquarters. I will therefore not be immune from prosecution under Malaysian laws if my allegations are false and without tangible evidence to back up these allegations.
It took you two weeks, Muhammad son of Muhammad, to organise last Saturday’s gathering. Would one month be sufficient for you to organise this next one? In the meantime, I shall be working on all my evidence in preparation of the expected gathering in the Umno headquarters. I shall of course be bringing my team along so that they can personally testify as to the authenticity of all these allegations, documents, etc., in the event my word alone is not good enough. I seek your permission to webcast this coming event live on the internet so that all those not able to present themselves at the PWTC can follow the events in the comfort of their homes or offices.
I’m sure most Malaysians are hoping for RPK’s challenge to be taken up by M2. And as a lead-up to the event at PWTC, I hope our fearless mainstream media who have their addresses solidly on Malaysian soil unlike the gutless bloggers, will also broadcast this challenge for all to see.
This will also show their unbiasedness and balance since they were quite happy to splash M2’s statements about cowardly bloggers all over their printed pages and airwaves. As well as give credibility to claims that our media is world class and on par if not better than their counterparts elsewhere. After all this is only some party functionary we are talking about, not the prime minister of the country or even his deputy.
Just like MSNBC. Which said the following not about some minor party official or petty office holder, but the president of the mighty USA and his deputy, and on prime time TV, too. It’s a bit of a long read, but worth every bit of byte for all the ringing similarities.
“I didn’t vote for him,” an American once said, “But he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
That is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
The man who said those 17 words—improbably enough—was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair’s-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.
“I didn’t vote for him but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”
We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president’s partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world—but merely that we may function.
But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust—a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.
We enveloped our President in 2001.And those who did not believe he should have been elected—indeed those who did not believe he had been elected—willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.
And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison—at the Constitutional Convention—said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish—the President will keep you out of prison?
In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens—the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.
This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of “a permanent Republican majority,” as if such a thing—or a permanent Democratic majority—is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.
Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.
The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.
The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.
I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.
And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.
When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.
“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”
President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.
It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.
And in one night, Nixon transformed it.
Watergate—instantaneously—became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting—in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood – that he was the law.
Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.
Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.
The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.
But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush—and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal—the average citizen understands that, Sir.
It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one—and it stinks. And they know it.
Nixon’s mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.
It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to “base,” but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign
Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.
But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.
It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them—or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them—we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
We of this time—and our leaders in Congress, of both parties—must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach—get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.
For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone—anyone—about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president,and I hope he does a good job.”