ANWAR THE END

ANWAR: A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

The Malaysian opposition in politics is doomed to repeat the failures of its leading light Lim Kit Siang, the longest serving opposition leader anywhere in the world.  Being in opposition is all Lim it appears has achieved in his political lifetime. And that’s Lim’s legacy. It is now likely to be passed on like that proverbial poisoned chalice  to Anwar Ibrahim or anyone else who succeeds him in opposition.

Recent events and developments in the fortunes of  Parti Keadlian Rakyat (PKR) leader seems to suggest that Anwar may have already drunk out of that poisoned chalice of Lim’s.

The Malaysian government (if that’s who is behind  the timing of the Court of Appeal decision against Anwar: although there is no evidence to back up that proposition), could not have chosen a better time to destroy Anwar Ibrahim than now. With the reversal of his acquittal on the charge of sodomy in the High Court of Kuala Lumpur Anwar is now set to face a further test of his credibility as a person and as a politician. 

Yet there are those who will say that the Court of Appeal’s decision on the Sodomy charge against Anwar Ibrahim is politically motivated and timed. Lawyers are amongst these critics. And if it is indeed the case that the timing has been politically motivated then, why not? we ask.

Anwar is a politician with a history of playing dirty and outside of the Rule of Law and the rules of fairness and justice (The Fairuz Video for one).

For all intents and purposes Anwar’s ambitious play for the Kajang seat is over before it even began.  A political still birth. His political fate has been sealed with a criminal conviction and a jail sentence.

Anwar may now be barred from contesting the Kajang by election under Article 48 (e) of the Federal Constitution. Under that particular article of the Federal Constitution he is disqualified under the Constitution from holding office as a member of parliament.

The courts are not bound to stay the sentence imposed on him by the Court of Appeal pending a further appeal on his behalf. A stay of execution is not a right that accrues to Anwar but a discretion in the hands of the judges to exercise if they are persuaded to do so. And considering how the legal fraternity and Anwar have treated the courts in the recent past, they should not expect the good graces of the courts and judges who they have brought into disrepute to prevail. The courts are not inclined to show any mercy or tolerance for the man or his mission. It would be inimical to justice and the preservation of the reputation and integrity of the courts and its judges to do so.

An analysis of the law and a prelude to Anwar’s acquittal being quashed is to be found in our earlier article here from 201.

https://takemon.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/anwar-naked-but-free/

PARALYZED FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

The US, especially presidential hopeful and big time Anwar supporter, Hillary Clinton and her president Obama are in a pickle in the Ukraine now.

Having backed a bloody coup there by the Nazi group Svoboda in the Ukraine ( a group not unlike what Bersih is to Malaysia), the US and Hillary are now faced with a reality they had not foreseen or calculated into the matrix of politics in that region. Those same failures appear to have manifested themselves in Egypt, Syria, Malaysia, Thailand and Libya.

These American funded “Springs” abroad are quickly turning into winters of discontent and rivers of blood everywhere. In light of whats happening in the Ukraine and with Putin’s fight back and local resistance, Anwar and his problems pale into insignificance and irrelevance as far as the west is concerned. Anwar and his mates (Ambiga included) are no priority for the west to deal with now.

The west have bigger fish to fry and their hands are getting burned in the process. Their media will throw a one liner on and off in the interests of hedging their bets on Anwar Ambiga and their minions. Anwar is a non entity. Ambiga is on a very slippery slope and a watch list.

WHO AND WHAT IS ANWAR?

Anwar is a man whose sole objective in his personal and political life has always been his ego and that of his family dynasty  interests (apart from demonizing Dr. Mahathir). And as long as that remains his creed and the main focus of his politics he will continue to be a target of his opponents, friends and foes alike. And as long as he treats the law and the courts with contempt, he can expect nothing better in return.

Anwar will continue to fall into traps he sets for others and in the process he will continue to shoot himself in what remains of his already shot out foot.

The fact of Anwar Ibrahim’s bi sexuality is legend from his days at Malay College. The fact he has been unable to shake off allegation after allegation against him in this regard is where his main problem lies. His supporters are in large part to blame for his problems. Its always been and always will be only about Anwar and his family versus Dr. Mahathir and not about his no show policies. And that’s been a fatal flaw for the opposition and Anwar in general.

Western Gay lobbies wanting to transplant their life styles and interests into the Malaysian socio political and cultural milieu stand tall amongst Anwars backers. The others who pursue personal and political interests of their own using him are the likes of Ambiga Sreenivasan  and the Kit Siang dynasty. Neither of the latter or former are any different to Anwar in many respects.

In previous articles on this blog we warned of these so called Anwar supporters. Anwar paid no heed to these warnings. Instead we were subjected to the invectives and threats by PKR supporters and followers .

Anwar should have learned to rely less on each of these so called ‘supporters,’ each of who has an agenda of their own whilst riding comfortably on his coat tails. There is no cohesion within the opposition. There never will be any as they represent disparate mainly personal interests which have no alignment with national priorities. And they never will win in their present form. That’s also because the opposition one hears of is not the only opposition to government in Malaysia. PKR are merely another set of loud mouths amongst many.

THE OPPOSITION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE COURTS

Each time the “opposition” to government in Malaysia receives a favourable judgment in the Malaysian courts, they refer to the judges who hand down those judgements as “Brave” “Great” and “Good”. Whenever an unfavourable judgment comes down on any of them or their activities however just that judgment may be, they attack the government in all its forms, the judiciary and the courts in the process.

Such conduct may be forgiveable (although it is not) when lay people attack the integrity of the courts and judges. However these attacks are often the work of lawyers and politicians. As lawyers these critics are officers of the courts, sworn to protect its integrity, to maintain and uphold its dignity at all times. They do not. That’s a dereliction of the duty of the Malaysian Bar Council and its members. And the buck ought to stop with them.

Back to Anwar Ibrahim and his present dilemma. Anwar may have thought he was running free. However he does run around like a desperate man with his past catching up behind him (if you will excuse the pun).

Anwar knew all along that the ghost of his Sodomy past ( and other sexual indiscretions) would come back to haunt him. The video images of Anwar in his tryst with an unnamed prostitute was merely the tip of a large moral iceberg. His wife and daughter as first family in waiting ought to have said or done something about it. They did not.

ANWAR THE MAN ?

Anwar has never been known for his discretion. Quite the opposite. He has an ego the size of Mount Everest. Where he has no stage he  is prone to creating one either by standing on the weaknesses of others or by creating a platform of cheap rhetoric and personal attacks on others he despises. Judges, the courts and parliament. This is because Anwar is a man with whom time has caught up and to whom his mortality is now a reality.

He looks gaunt, tired, frail and emaciated at the best of times. The reasons for this are best known to those close to him. Anwar does not like being attacked. He does not mind others being the target of his bile and vitriol though.

Anwar has nothing of an achievement in political terms to boast of as a politician or a leader. His promises of late (the last decade) have been remarkable for its failures to deliver. He has never given up an opportunity to miss out on an opportunity either.

ANWAR’S PROMISES OF A SECULAR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT AND FAIR PLAY

The contradictions of Anwar and his PKR (his family) are best manifest in the recent matrimonial dispute between his daughter and her beau.

Whilst spitting out secularism and democracy from one side of the PKR mouth to frothing point, Nurull Izah chose the jurisdiction of the Syariah courts to launch her divorce proceedings against the prince she married. So much for support of secular promises by the PKR.

On another score, his wife and daughter both have an overriding obligation to their constituents and to the public they claim to serve, to have said something about Anwar’s sexuality and, at the very least to have said something about the state of their family. They are after all a first family in waiting and we have a right to know about them.

There is no privacy in public life for them to hide behind. As public figures their trademark has been to condemn and defame anyone who they disagree with. Yet Wan Azziza and Nurull have remained deafening silent on at least the video. What kind of first family does the country deserve?

In the view of the PKR Datin Rosmah, the family of former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed is fair game but not the first family in waiting of Anwar, Wan Azziza and Nurul.

A year ago the country was in the grip of election fever. Anwar was so confident he would trounce the Barisan to snatch government from them and went around distributing victory speeches to select western media representatives, requesting an Australian journalist put the finishing touches to his draft.

It was not to be so and he cried foul losing the support of even those Gay journalists from abroad who crowd around the man often enough hoping he will be the crest of that tsunami sweeping the west in the advancement of Gay rights ‘uber alles’.

We reported from interviews with prominent Saudi Wahhabi clerics just prior to the elections last year 2013. Each of these clerics said Anwar categorically that Anwar was the forerunner to an Islamic state in Malaysia. And they blessed him.

A GOOD OPPOSITION IS NECESSARY BUT NOT THE PKR

Anwar is not being honest. He never was and never will be. There is and always will be need for an opposition whether that be in Malaysia, England, Japan or the USA. But an opposition for the sake of an opposition is a recipe for disaster as it is evident in Malaysia.

A weak and incompetent opposition like the PKR strengthens government and reduces its efficiency paving the way for weaknesses and yes corruption. But there is an opposition in Malaysia and it is not only the PKR or Chinese assemblies like the DAP.

The opposition we speak of does not take to the streets on Hillary Clinton and George Soros’s money or that of the National Endowment for Democracy. They are more into engagement and negotiation, proper political discourse and argument even if through blogging and writing.

The opposition we refer to are people who are proudly independent and can rely on their own intellect, intelligence and their ability to fight within a democratic parliamentary constitutional government. Their arguments based on merit, fact and not rumour. But they are not the stuff the pretend journalists of the alternative media are interested in. These are the silent achievers who do not have a finger in someone else’s pie.

A BAG OF HOT AIR

Anwar shifts his policies (what policies?) and his preferences, his position on any topic like the proverbial fly does from turd to turd. He has no policies other than the borrowed clichés from wherever it falls.

He moves from constituency to constituency and from electorate to electorate unnerving even some of his closest aides and advisors. And yes Bloomberg and other trash rags seeking world domination through street campaigns would love that.

Anwar has not once posited a single costed policy of his which could be identified as an alternative to what government can or already does not provide to the citizens of Malaysia. He instead boasts of a ‘one size fits all’ raft of promises which can never be achieved in the manner he says it could be.

SODOMY AN ACQUITTAL CAN BE APPEALED- BAD LEGAL ADVICE

In 2012 a court acquitted (not dismissed ) Anwar on a charge of sodomy against his wife’s driver. That acquittal if read closely, was a precursor to an appeal. That appeal has now resulted in a higher court setting aside or overturning that earlier acquittal. The reasons for the earlier court’s decision was flawed.

That decision was unsound and the reasoning for that acquittal was peppered with appealable content chapter and verse. Anwar allowed to speak from the dock let out a tirade then which was used to hang him recently. That was the fatal flaw of his over confident lawyer. He hid from an opportunity to be cross examined, his alibis (all 13 of them) having disappeared in the heat of the hearing.

Adding to this problem one might want to know why someone like Anwar, a moving target of the government as he claims he is, would continually find himself in hot water.

To find an answer to that question a cursory read of the application drafted by lawyers acting for the Catholic church in the Allah affair would hold a clue. Anwar was and continues to be represented by incompetence from amongst the Malaysian legal profession to compliment his own.

BAD LEGAL SKILLS HANG THE DEFENCE

The Church’s application is a prolix document which relegates to a small appendix at the end of their application, the questions they seek to have resolved by the court.

A copy of that 50 page document is supplied in PDF form at this site: http://www.loyarburok.com/2014/03/05/allah-submissions/

The document is preceded by what is meant to be a set of legal arguments. Much of what is in their pleadings in that document is not footnoted, has little reference to legal authorities or merit from a legal perspective. It is desultory and haphazardly cut and paste. It has little in the character of properly drafted set of pleadings by skilled lawyers.

This is what Anwar and the church are faced with as an opposition to government. And till they are able to correct those flaws in their strategies and their ranks they are doomed to wander in the proverbial political wilderness.

ANWAR A MAN WITH MANY DAGGERS STUCK IN HIS BACK

It was clear a long time back that Anwar would never be prime minister of Malaysia. At least not while he has his so called “allies” and “advisers” remain with him in the PKR.

There is not a single force within the opposition from Bersih, especially Bersih who has not made or sought to make a deal independent of Anwar during these past 3 years with the Najib government in office.

There is much evidence and documented evidence at that, that Bersih and the DAP have all acted in a conspiratorial manner to hasten Anwar Ibrahim’s demise politically.

There is much evidence that Berish’s leadership had indicated in private conversations that Anwar would never be PM. Yet the mule cart rolls on as the wheels fall off one by one and the mules die.

‘大耳窿’ THE AH LONG:

A SYMPTOM OF FAILED BANKING PRACTICES AND PERSONAL MORALITY IN AN INSATIABLE CONSUMER SOCIETY

 “The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice” … Aristotle Greek Philosopher.

They are called ‘loan sharks’ in the west, Yamikinyu in Japan, Sauekar in Mumbai or the Kabuli in Delhi. They are the Kabuli because of their Afghan origins.

Ah Long (derived from the Cantonese ‘大耳窿’ ) is a term used to describe loan sharks in places like Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Operating illegally and most often under the patronage of unseen public officials and  corrupt police, the Ah Longs are the product of age old Triad practices that originated in the courts of the medieval clans and warlords who preyed on the poor and thrived on debt slavery in pre Maoist China.

Today the Ah Long in Malaysia operates via the convenience of a wide network of third party mercenary thugs and corrupt off duty policemen.

The Chinese Triads today employ mainly Tamils and Indonesian thugs to execute ‘enforcement’ of debt obligations for them. Typically these thugs are from the ranks of displaced and desperately unemployed youth willing to do anything for a dollar.

A RECENT EXAMPLE OF THE TRIAD THIRD PARTY MERCENARY CULTURE

The Triads engage these unemployed displaced youth in much the same way the wife of murdered businessman Leong Kian Sheong is alleged to have used 3 Tamil assassins to carry out the brutal murders of Kian Sheong and his mistress, Vivien Wong.

Wong’s and Leong’s throats were cut from ear to ear. A ceremonial and symbolic act the hallmark of Triads. The prevalence of Triad activities wherever Chinese communities exist is common as it is pervasive, widespread and sinister. The Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore do not like the existence or the history and cultural origins of the Triads mentioned along racial lines. It is an embarrassment and a convenience rolled into one for the Chinese especially where offences like those of the murder of Leong Kian Sheong involved members of two non Malay ethnic groups in Malaysia, viz the Chinese and the Tamils.

WHO AND WHAT IS THE AH LONG?

The Ah Long  is the loan shark who lends money to the vulnerable, the weak and the economically challenged. Typically their customers are people who are unable to obtain loans from scheduled banks and finance companies.

The Ah Long’s primary targets are inveterate gamblers, low and mid income families, the high level consumer and the asset rich cash poor sectors of communities of Malaysia and other south east Asian nations.

A ready made market exists in the upwardly mobile class of consumers in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore in whose DNA can be found the genes of social climbers and the class conscious, whose ascendancy in society is acquired though financial gain and material possessions at any cost. Asians.

The Ah Long’s services are often spread by word of mouth and public notices. They boldly advertise in public in a style that deceptively borrows the language of licensed lenders and banks. As is the case with loan sharks in the west, in Japan, India and other places, the Ah Long is charcterised by the extraordinarily high interest rates he charges on short term loans unsecured and backed in redemption by the most unimaginable forms of violence and human degradation.

WHITE SLAVERY ORGAN TRAFFICKING AND THE AH LONG

“You have among you many a purchased slave Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,You use in abject and in slavish parts Because you bought them. Shall I say to you Let them be free, marry them to your heirs. Why sweat they under burdens?. . . You will answer The slaves are ours.’ So do I answer you.The pound of flesh which I demand of him is dearly bought. ‘Tis mine, and I will have it.”
(IV.i.89–99) (The Merchant of Venice)

Corruption through infiltration of Australia’s immigration and customs services has finally come to the surface. A report published by the anti corruption commission of New South Wales in December 2012 revealed serious infiltration into the immigration service by mainly Chinese drug gangs from abroad.

The investigation resulted in the arrest of a number of officers serving at terminals in Sydney, Melbourne and two other major air and sea ports in Australia.

Statistics reveal an alarming number of young women from the communities of Chinese, Viet Namese, Thai, and Japanese migrants working off Ah Long debts as prostitutes in the west. Many would have arrived in their destinations as students, casual workers in restaurants or factories arranged by Ah Longs and their corrupt network of associates in these places.

On arrival these victims soon discover that the promises of the Ah Longs of a better life in their new destinations is nothing more than an inducement to a life of inescapable misery.

None of the Asian social welfare groups intervene. Not the Churches, not the NGO’s nor their ethnic community groups. It almost always falls on the conscience of the European hosts to assist and to redeem these victims and where possible to repatriate them in a dignified way.

FOREIGN MAIDS- AN AH LONG BUSINESS

Another variation to the Ah Long theme is the menace and tragedy of the house maid phenomenon sweeping all of the prosperous regions of Asia and the middle east.

A large majority of these so called “maids” the NGO communities support are in fact victims of debt slavery. They are often transported to places like Malaysia under the ‘legitimate’ cover of maid employment agencies in order to pay off debts. And perhaps negligently and unknowingly the Churches support and patronise this practice of keeping maids in places as Malaysia by lobbying for more of them to be imported into places like Malaysia.

The vexed and highly emotive issues of the abuse of maids raised by the Catholic church, women’s groups and Irene Fernandez in Malaysia has focused on the working conditions of these victims of a form of white slavery. But none of them have a focus or agenda for eradicating the source of its evils and the trade itself.

There has been no comment or policy initiative from the Church, Women’s interest organizations or from Irene Fernandez herself a lead spokesperson of an NGO at the forefront of this issue.

Other vile and criminal methods inflicted by Ah Longs to enforce repayment of their loans include, serious assaults, knee capping, literally being fed to trained Rottweiler dogs in their cages, rape and forced oral sex on the spouses and female children of borrowers.

The practice has been reported in and around the KL, Kelang, the Syah Alam corridor of Selangor state where Ah Long predators are most prolific in plying their trade. Johore and Perak are not far behind the if statistical data on the subject is to be believed.

POUND OF FLESH- LITERALLY

There are at least 24 reported cases of new born male children of borrowers in Peninsula Malaysia, being offered or forcibly taken by the Ah Long in satisfaction of an unpaid debt. These children are then sold into the lucrative black market for male children to childless couples abroad.

The most common use for young women in debt default situations with the Ah Long is more often in prostitution till a debt is paid off and that could mean forever.

A disturbing trend common in China and India and now emerging in Malaysia and Singapore is the collateral of body parts in satisfaction of a debt.

A Tamil woman in Malaysia is reported to have been lured into sacrificing one of her kidneys to a compatible recipient via the Ah Long in Kuala Lumpur. Actual details of the transaction were made known to us by members of a local evangelical church in Kuala Lumpur. The irony of the transaction is that the recipient of the kidney is also known to be from a family of worshipers at this same church.

The practice is widespread in many developing countries and is beginning to grow legs in Malaysia.

NGO IGNORANCE CHURCH COMPLICITY AND THE DETERRENCE OF SHAME

Much of data collected from the public on the Ah Long culture in Malaysia and Singapore has been collected by foreign researchers and agencies who are more trusted by victims than their local counterparts whose only concern appears to be scoring political points.

The NGO’s in Malaysia are perceived to have no depth, knowledge or genuine concern for the welfare of the weak in their societies. Victims have nowhere to go. The churches in Malaysia too are distracted by the political debates that have been raging there and have no time for the victims of Ah Longs.

There is a widespread culture of mistrust of public officials and anyone even remotely resembling a public official in Malaysia. When it comes to reporting crime it is known that ‘shame’ crimes where especially the chastity of a woman is likely to be called into question 90% of them go unreported.

The more powerful cultural deterrent and disincentive to reporting the Ah Long is the underlying sentiment of shame attached to being a borrower. A borrower from an Ah Long at that. And it is that sentiment that deters victims from coming forward. The social stigma attached to being in the debt of an Ah Long and its ugly consequences further discourages more public discussion on the subject and reporting of the offences of the Ah Long.

The Ah Long is classed as the biggest social menace in Malaysia and Singapore. It comes a close second to drugs and alcohol and is often credited by social workers for family break ups and suicides especially amongst young women. Women the biggest victims of the Ah Long experience in families. Its consequences are too diverse to fit into a sociologists limited pigeon hole for quick analysis.

THE LONG REACH OF THE AH LONG

There was a time when the Ah Long was the local hoodlum or grocer who had extra cash and a bit of muscle to lend to people in desperate need of money for a wedding or funeral expenses. The practice was condoned but it nonetheless received a degree of social acceptance in the wider community at a time when insurance and banking products did not cater for such contingencies as they do today.

Surprisingly for a country at the forefront of Sharia banking and finance and a Muslim country at that where religious doctrine eschews usury and forbids it as one of the cardinal sins and the root of all evil, Malaysia has one of the world’s highest incidences of the Ah Long experience.

The scourge of the Ah Long is growing unabated in all major cities of Malaysia and has spread its tentacles to the rural heartland of Malaysia. It has reached all levels of society and its spread is said to rival that of the evangelical Christian youth movements and multi level marketing.

STUDENTS & POLITICIANS

Large numbers of Malaysians go abroad to study each year. Amongst this crowd are those who enroll at foreign institutions of learning as students as a means of migrating abroad seeking better economic opportunities than those available to them in Malaysia.

There have been a number of arrests of students engaging in illegal activities in their host nations especially in places as Canada, the UK, Australia, the US.

Non traditional destinations for commonwealth students like Holland, has featured in the spread of the Ah Long and its cultural base. Amsterdam, London and Vancouver have each witnessed an entrenched culture of the Triad develop like a rash in their midst over the past few decades.

In 1973, the Dutch government chartered a Sabena (Belgian Airlines) DC-10 to repatriate a plane load of Malaysian Chinese who they had rounded up, charged and convicted in Holland for various crimes ranging from heroin trafficking, extortion, protection rackets and prostitution.

It was then described by an Interpol officer as “the tip of a very large iceberg”. As alerts were issued for Chinese youth especially from Malaysia at various western entry points after the Holland incident in 1973, a tsunami of “students” slowly  began their gradual and intense migration to these lucrative destinations to ply their illicit trades on behalf of the Ah Long.

Students today account for more than 50% of the illegals from Malaysia into the west caught, charged, tried and deported for various Ah Long related crimes. Most of these sent by the Ah Long through their vast  network of travel & migration agents which includes a few lawyers in the destination countries and in Malaysia.

However the Ah Long’s most high profile couriers to date has been a Malaysian politician caught attempting to smuggle over a million dollars in cash into Australia. The politician in question was apprehended by alert security and customs officials at Brisbane airport two years ago. Sadly this politician is not alone.

DR. VICTOR CHANG – VICTIM OF THE AH LONG

In 1995 pioneering Australian Chinese heart surgeon Dr. Victor Chang was gunned down by two Malaysian Chinese gangsters in what police described as a failed extortion bid.  What’s not publicly cavilled is the proposition that Dr. Chang had in the view of some been the victim of the Ah Long and their Triad organizations. It is believed Chang had refused to sell a part of his invention, an artificial heart to Triad “investors” who had approached him in private to invest. The consequence of that refusal is now deeply embedded in the psyche of many Australians.

Whether there is any truth to that story with Dr. Chang is hard to tell. But to ridicule the proposition is foolhardy considering the extents to which Ah Longs and their Triad organizations have historically gone in the past in pursuit of money through extortion.

The Triads thrive in Sydney openly displaying many of their traits at restaurants in the water front and with the open soliciting for prostitution of young mainly Chinese women in most of Sydney’s major suburbs. The corrupting of Sydney’s police could not have been a very difficult task for the Ah Long considering the long history of corruption within the New South Wales police force and its other law enforcement agencies.

Many Australian politicians are known to have accepted bribes, expensive gifts and other inducement to favour Triad interest in Australia. It includes influencing immigration and business license decisions, government letters to Chinese business people engaging in business in South East Asia and China and for a variety of other purposes such as places at universities and favourable exam results.

AIRLINE STEWARDESSES AS ESCORTS AND MAS PILOTS TRAFFICKING DRUGS

More recently and notoriously an MAS airline pilot Thiagu Supramaniam was arrested in 2012 at Brisbane airport in possession of a five kilos of meth amphetamine first thought to be heroin on his person. And the problem does not stop there.

Thiagu is not the only known airline pilot involved in the trafficking of large quantities of high grade heroin, cocaine, ice and ecstasy on behalf of the Ah Long.

 More than half a dozen Malaysian Airlines stewardesses abroad particularly  in Europe and in the US have been caught doubling up as ‘Escorts” whilst on stop overs in these destinations. Holland, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and Los Angeles being the new popular, lucrative spots for these girls to ply their second trade in because of the strong presence of Triads there.

The recent death of a Chinese Malaysian airline stewardess in Holland is widely believed to have been linked to the Triads whose presence in Europe is anchored in Holland. She is believed to have been a ‘working girl’ for the Triads unbeknownst to her family. The real cause of her death has never been revealed apart from the obvious, a fall.

Whilst Hong Kong and Taiwan have previously been  prominent in the “Escort” circuit for airline stewardesses, the preference for these girls and their Ah Long pimps has always been the larger cities of the west where the Triads are now a well entrenched criminal organizations.

PROSTITUTION RIFE AMONGST MAS STEWARDS AND STEWARDESSES 

The practice of prostituting airline stewardesses abroad is quite widespread. In fact it has been reported and brought to the attention of MAS management previously. The problem though is securing a conviction without which the allegations remain just that and the ability of management to act is limited without a conviction. Or at least that is the theory.

MAS stewardesses have long been “party girls” to board members and their official guests at functions in Malaysia and abroad. There are at least two known videos of prominent Malaysian’s from the 1990’s in compromising positions and situations with Malaysian Airline stewardesses. And the vice does not stop there.

By contrast Singapore Airlines (SIA) is know to chaperon their stewardesses whilst they are abroad knowing full well the temptation and propensity for such activities by Asian gangs preying on their girls whilst abroad. SIA too it is known have suffered the experience of the Ah Long preying on young vulnerable women whose families are in debt to them. However to their credit the airline has become more circumspect and vigilant about the problem now.

Reliance on Ah Longs and other shark lenders as alternatives to banking and its red tape in Malaysia as an industry now challenges the dominance of the regular banking and finance sector. This is  the case at least where private personal lending is concerned. The pervasive influence of the Ah Long has deeper and more sinister social undertones that are not immediately apparent in the “ economically prosperous  moral jungle” Malaysia.

Where gambling of all variety thrives especially amongst the Chinese communities in Malaysia and Singapore, the influence and long dark shadow of the Ah Long is ever present. Oddly enough their most desperate victims are the Chinese themselves and if for no other reason than their renowned propensity for gambling.

MURDER AND POLICING THE AH LONG MENACE

The Ah Longs menace has resulted in a number of documented suicides by debtors so hopelessly in debt and unable to cope with the psychological, physical and social consequences of their indebtedness to the Ah Long. The most tragic of which is believed to be the pilot of a Silk Air flight 185 that crashed into a lake in Sumatra Indonesia killing 97 passengers and the crew.

There are reports of murder directly linked to Ah Long activity. However the statistics in this area are somewhat blurred because prosecutions have been frustrated through the inaction interference and omissions of corrupt members of the police force and the involvement of lawyer intermediaries intervening to scuttle due process.

The disturbing trend is such now that off duty policemen are known to accompany Ah Long enforcers, along with Tamil thugs to keep watch whilst they “enforce the Ah Long’s rights” under the debt obligations against the borrower.

This is known to range from a straight forward threat, to molesting a female member of the household, taking a woman away “for a ride” giving the debtor time to make repayment in full within say an hour. The known consequences of these rides have often known to be, a rape, others sexual assaults not quite amounting to rape like forced oral sex and in some cases mutilation.

CONSUMERISM: SOCIAL STATUS AT ANY COST

A sociologist describes this phenomenon as a by- product of a consumerism. It is known to be common in societies especially amongst Indians and Chinese where social status expressed in material acquisitions, a larger house, a newer car, a child studying abroad, expensive jewelry, brand name accessories, overseas trips and other lifestyle addictions are common. But the greatest and most common source of the vice is from gambling. And the Chinese have no monopoly in this vice in Malaysia today although they control much of it.

Malays from across the spectrum of Malay society have acquired a taste for the good life and with it the promise of fast wealth from gambling. A game of chance. And with that many chance their lives away.

Government negligence is something that most people are unable to explain nor the government explain away. The cost to the economy is immeasurable at the social, human and economic level. The reason is that much of this vice and its effects often go unreported. Debtor victims are ashamed for being in debt and many more are ashamed of the punishments inflicted on them by the Ah Long. And the price they pay in various assaults, the degradation and personal humiliation for their sins is the price for their silence.

There is a particularly ugly and enduring stigma attached especially to female members of families of the Ah Long experience.

GOVERNMENT TURNING A BLIND EYE- A BLACK EYE IN FUTURE

If government were to seriously go about attacking this menace they would enforce available criminal sanctions against the Ah Long in an exemplary manner. Many within the police force and other government organizations would be affected if this did occur.

What the government may be ignoring in all of this also is a huge potential vote bank. If it only took the initiative to force “debt forgiveness” against Ah Longs or impose punitive high taxes on Ah Longs when caught to discourage them from continuing in the business it could well drive Ah Longs out of business and recoup unpaid taxes in their networks reducing considerably the impact of this huge social menace in Malaysia.

The Ah Long may well be Malaysia’s Greek debt problem which the state chooses to ignore. One day the chickens will come home to roost and that one day may not be too far away.

FRAUD AS A POLICY PLATFORM FOR A CRUMBLING OPPOSITION

BY WAY OF DECEIT

The proliferation of unsubstantiated, doctored and often completely fraudulent material by opposition groups in Malaysia and their supporters abroad requires a response. The disinformation campaign now entering its 4^th year has achieved little else than to discredit further an opposition already in disarray, splintered, fragmented and desperately searching for a way out.

Quite apart from being offensive, utterly false and poorly constructed, these “articles of faith” and proofs of a “better alternative government in the wings” ritualistically recite a litany of lies about Malaysia’s “low standing” in the international community, tales of “murder” “conspiracy” & “corruption”  in government. The core within this group is an anti Malay anti Islamic coalition funded from across the causeway and abroad. Their material a reflection of the desperation that mirrors the character of its authors, their”policies” and the aspirations of the communities they represent.

Much of the literature that forms the political agenda and arguments  of the opposition circulated via the internet in emails and so called alternative media is delivered in a thinly veiled anti Islamic campaign orchestrated by the ultra right wing of republican politics.

The mantras of this new media rifled from the garbage heap of Islamophobes of the politics of the Neo cons, restructured by local operatives to conceal its provenance attempting to give it that embarrassing and pitiful local gloss hoping to convince the public that these are erudite pieces of scholarship or award winning journalism  sufficient to bring down a government.

A CAMPAIGN OF LIES LIES AND MORE LIES

Driving this campaign of disinformation sadly are journalists, retired and serving judicial officers, ambitious civil servants, lawyers and a mish mash of wannabes, all rolled into a socio political sushi roll of rotting smelly left overs.  Bound together by the opposition’s singular objective of replacing the legitimacy of a “Malay domination of Malaysia” is a Chinese “political objective” touted as alternatives. That alternative is presented to the public in  as much the same way as it was prior to the separation of Singapore i from the federation in 1965. The truth history reveals now is that Lee was not asked to leave. The Tengku was made a patsy of Britain who engineered those remarks and played midwife to the birth of an independent Singapore sans Malay Malaysia.

Interestingly amongst them is that mushrooming of well funded alternative media. Complete with state of the art portable and fixed studio equipment, access to politicians like Anwar Ibrahim who is all ears and polite in their presence, high resolution and well designed IT protocols funded by certain business groups. Advertising revenue comes courtesy of a generous and deep pocketed group of NGO’s all in the nick of time for the up coming general elections in Malaysia.

WHERE AT FIRST TRY YOU DON’T SUCCEED-LIE

At a lower though effective end of the scale is that college of spammers and rumour mongers. Their patron saint being the fallen angel Raja Petra Kamaruddin and his fellow “bloggers” in crime.  At an even lower level of the spectrum are those who engage in the creation and relay of circulating chain email letters via the internet and email.

This group comprises the scurrilous, mischievous authors of the apocryphal defamatory material and lies of all sorts they spread. They consist mainly of emigres in places as far flung as Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US. They range in socio economic order from students and temporary residents to new citizens, businessmen and second rate academics propped up by the intelligence apparatus of their host nations. A convenient and captive tool for the left overs back in Malaysia who still believe in the second coming of the White Raj.

Their staple is that even bolder and manufactured racist document, purporting to repeat the fictions said to have emanated from the lips of, in one case at least, the Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard.

THE JULIA GILLARD AND QANTAS PILOT FICTIONS

In that fictitious document currently doing the rounds, Prime Minister Julia Gillard is said to disparaged and publicly vilified Muslim migrants in Australia.She is said to have called on them to return to wherever it is they had come from if they were dissatisfied with Australia’s Anglo Celtic Christian way of life.

The Christian element in that chain letter is injected into that document by none other than the Catholic diocese and their allies in the council of churches in Malaysia.

In a second and similar,but equally unimpressive and defamatory circular bearing all the hallmarks of the opposition coalition of the Bersih variety is one which purports to have sprouted from the pen of a Qantas pilot.

That document claims the pilot in question vilified and chastised Muslims in Australia  in a similar style and for very similar reasons as the fiction attributed to Julia Gillard. Both documents bear a strangely identical anti -Islamic tone to their central themes with an uncanny though distinctive Malaysian Chinese style of language for its flavour.