A letter sent by the former chief of Malaysia’s espionage agency, Datuk Hasanah Abdul Hamid to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prior to the election created much hue and cry by a lawyer, leaders, and youth leader aligned to the new government.
Personally, it is uncalled for and rather stupid to put such views in writing. Have heard much of Hasanah's exploit and rumoured abuses but it is all now water under the bridge.
But the letter is something else. More on that later.
Revelation from a top US State Department funded body linked to the Republican admited working together with the then opposition.
For few general elections, it is an open secret but the video acknowledged the covert operation between the US and opposition.
Hasanah is now exposed as not being quite intelligent but is the collaboration with IRI not treason too?
FMT reported:
MONDAY, AUGUST 06, 2018As far as those claims against China, it has not been substantiated by the Minister of Finance who was merely raising such issues in Parliament to evade answering questions directly and was in a political propaganda mode to please voters political expectation than about governance.
Republican-linked US think tank tells of long ties with opposition to bring down BN
FMT Reporters | August 6, 2018
Top official of a US State Department-funded body tells of his meeting with top Pakatan Harapan leaders in the Prime Minister's Office following the coalition's polls victory.Daniel Twinning of the International Republican Institute (IRI). (Youtube screengrab)
PETALING JAYA: An organisation heavily linked to senior Republican figures as well as former top US intelligence officers has been working with the Malaysian opposition since 2002, including the Pakatan Harapan coalition which took power in the May elections, a forum joined by top American think tanks was told recently.
The International Republican Institute (IRI), a Washington-based outfit whose board of directors include Republican politicians such as John McCain as well as former National Security advisers and ex-military officers, said its efforts in Malaysia had finally paid off in the 14th general election, and benefitted the US in terms of its current rivalry with China.
“I visited and I was sitting there with many of the new leaders of this new government, many of whom were our partners who we’ve been working with for 15 years, and one of the most senior of them who’s now one of the people running the government said to me, ‘Gosh, IRI, you never gave up on us even when we were ready to give up on ourselves’,” said IRI president Daniel Twinning in a forum organised by the Center for Strategic & International Studies last month.
Twinning said during a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in the aftermath of the elections, he told senior PH leaders that credit was to them and “not to us”.
His remarks are likely to further stir an ongoing debate over the role of US influence in the Malaysian democratic process, after it was revealed that a top intelligence officer under former prime minister Najib Razak had urged for support from Washington in the event of a narrow victory for Barisan Nasional (BN) in the recent polls.
Police are currently investigating a letter written by Hasanah Ab Hamid to her counterpart in the Central Intelligence Agency, in which she said that the US was better off with Najib in charge rather than an “anti-semite” and “anti-West” Dr Mahathir Mohamad. PH leaders have meanwhile called for Hasanah to be charged with treason.
A quick check on IRI’s website shows the body is funded by the US State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organisation whose declared aim is to “strengthen democratic institutions around the world” including trade unions and free market forces. Twinning told the forum that Washington had benefitted from the new government in Putrajaya from the very start.
“Guess what one of the first steps the new government took: it froze Chinese infrastructure investments because it had opened the book and discovered that there was a lot of funny money swishing around what had been this very corrupt, close, unaccountable system,” he said, in an apparent reference to reviews of several mega projects involving Chinese companies including the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL).
Twinning admitted that there was little chance of Malaysia becoming a US ally, but said PH’s victory would work in Washington’s favour.
The revealed sales of Ayer Itam land in Penang require more information since simplifying it in a stand alone manner is ignoring the complexity the deals and transactions in the restructuring of 1MDB debt to bring down its debt level.
If Hasanah is accused of treason and she refute it, IRI official openly admitted to dealing with the then opposition and met the new government leaders at the Prime Minister's Office.
It looks like the PM's visit to Beijing on August will not go down well. Malaysia will continue to face the economic fallout from the China pullback and insistence to abide by the agreements.
Tun Dr Mahathir has announced plan for another trip to Japan before the China visit.
As much as PH should not bring in foreigners to participate in our politics, Hasanah should not have done the same and wrote to accuse Mahathir as pro-China.
Obviously she is wrong and Mahathir cannot be pro-China with US Department of Justice went out of the way to help create the 1MDB issue to bring down BN government.
A lawyer and former Special Branch agent was reported claiming it is a breach of protocol and treasonous. Her role is to gather information and not asking CIA to take side in a general election.
More so, her former boss and former Prime Minister Dato Najib is not aware of such letter. Hasanah admitted Najib is not in the know Naturally she denied. She did say she does not need to inform Najib.
Hasanah had made a police report on the leak of this confidential letter, in which the leak is equally irresponsible. This is not the sort of stuff for political discussion in the public sphere.
She claimed of the having the mandate of the MEIO to protect national security. The PM need not know of it. The contents of the letter were intelligence secrets which could not be turned into elements of public polemics.
Her lawyers issued a statement:
Be it Hasanah or PH, foreigners have no business interfering in our politics.