Sarawak Report can provide the answer to the question which is perplexing Malaysians.
Why did the Federal Court insist on suddenly scheduling their show trial for Anwar Ibrahim on Sept 8th and 9th, despite the fact that his lawyer would be away on medical leave until October?
At first the court refused to alter the date in the face of protest, but eventually they did agree to give up on the plan as the position became untenable.
We suggest these had been the chosen dates because Najib planned to drive his political opponent into an extended jail sentence the very day before he is due to be received by the Queen at Windsor Castle, for an event designed to promote him as a leading ‘moderate Muslim’!
This way, the Prime Minister most likely calculated that he could use the British Queen and Head of the Commonwealth to provide a seal of approval over the judicial persecution of his key political opponent and likewise his attack on homosexuality – after all Najib has chosen to charge Anwar on the grounds of sodomy.
Islamic Fashion Festival!
September 10th is a day that has been quietly put in Najib’s diary as a date not to miss.
After all, his wife Rosmah would never allow him to fail to attend her major annual charity function, which he has always dutifully shown up to at various locations around the world.
The somewhat bizarre event is designed to show how Islamic gear can still be, in Rosmah’s own words, “sexy”!
Given that the whole point of Islamic dress is surely to avoid being sexy these annual events have always promoted an air of confusion, with western models and designers roped in to join in to provide solutions.
Rosmah sees her event as a way of promoting the Malaysian leadership in the west as moderately minded and a friendly ally against fundamentalism.
At the same time she has successfully used it to promote her own social ambitions, targeting royalty and making sure to divert the proceeds of each event into their favourite charities.
This tactic started with the buttering up of Prince Albert of Monaco in 2010, whose banks are believed to take care of a lot of Malaysian and Sarawak money, which fled Switzerland.
Timber tycoons in Sarawak were obligingly pressured by Sarawak Chief Minister, Taib Mahmud, into funding the event on Rosmah’s behalf and Rosmah was able to present Prince Albert with a €100,000 cheque for his Environment Foundation at the end of the evening!
The fact that the Hii family, one of the worst desecrators of Sarawak’s Borneo Jungle, had funded that cheque provided a piquant irony to those in the know.
After Albert, Rosmah set her sights firmly on the British royal family and two recent consecutive Islamic Fashion Shows have been held amidst the bones of dinosaurs at London’s Natural History Museum and hosted by the wife of Prince Edward, the former PR executive, Sophie Wessex.
Sophie is now a polished member of the Royal Family in the UK and has taken on the role of Global Ambassador for the Duke of Edinburgh’s charity – The Duke of Edinburgh Award.
The proceeds from the 2011/12 Islamic Fashion Shows went to that!
So, come the 2014 event, it appears that Rosmah’s persistence has paid off.
After two years of having her husband’s charity benefit from this odd event, the Queen appears to have relented and agreed that she should host the third UK Islamic Fashion Festival in four years at Windsor Castle herself!
The date? September 10th as anyone of a host of invitees can confirm, since invitations went out just a few days ago!
The Duchess of Cambridge will act as patron to the event this time, according to Malaysian Tatler’s information on the subject. This is doubtless a spin off from her visit last year to Malaysia, during which Rosmah gave her a necklace containing strings of south sea peals.
Clearly the Foreign Office is still focused on its new Malaysia drive to promote British sales and Malaysian investment, come what may and told her it would be a good idea.
After all, BN political cronies personally pushed up property prices in Central London last year, when they re-located huge assets in advance of the GE13, becoming the capital’s biggest house buyers.
And it was the Malaysian Government-owned palm oil giant, Sime Darby (responsible for numerous environmental crimes) that bought over the Battersea Power Station development.
Possibly, the Queen had envisaged that the event at Windsor might provide an opportunity for the British to show the sympathy and solidarity with Malaysians that they undoubtedly feel over the two recent airline disasters.
But, until this morning neither she nor her aids had realised that Najib Razak would have the cheek to time his planned imprisonment of Anwar the day before!
An irregular trial that gives the lie to Najib’s claims
The Foreign Office are well aware that the trial of Anwar Ibrahim should have ended with his solid acquittal in the High Court.
After a lengthy and drawn out trial the judge ruled there was inadequate evidence to convict the opposition leader.
The trial had been tainted from the start by the change of the original charge from ‘rape’ to a consensual act of sodomy, after it became risibly obvious that the alleged victim was more powerful than the much older alleged offender.
The victim cum-‘offender’ has himself never been charged for this matter, which is no longer treated as a crime in most modern democracies.
However, an acquittal was clearly not acceptable to the government and the prosecution launched an astonishing appeal against Anwar’s acquittal.
There is no precedent in the British judicial system for the prosecution to appeal against an acquittal for a crime, except in rare cases where new evidence has later come to light.
But, in Najib’s ‘moderate Muslim democracy’ the laws have clearly been altered.
Shortly after Anwar announced an intention to run for the powerful position of Menteri Besar of Selangor, the Appeal Court duly struck and found him guilty after all, in the course of just half and hour’s review of the evidence one morning.
The Federal Court, being higher up, is even more vulnerable to political pressure and judicial placements and no one in Malaysia doubts that Anwar will be confirmed as ‘guilty of sodomy’.
It is a ‘crime’ designed to put off faithful Muslim voters on moral grounds, which is why the popular Anwar has been convicted of it twice.
After 5 years in jail, all charges were dropped against Anwar over the first ‘offence’.
But, this time around Najib’s prosecution service has further defied precedent by also appealing the Appeal Court ruling for not having imposed a long enough sentence!
The Appeal Court did Najib’s bidding in terms of finding Anwar guilty, but apparently their decision to give him 5 years once more was not enough for Najib Razak to feel comfortable.
And after all this, Najib planned to swan over to Windsor in his private jumbo jet and pose with the Queen as a moderate Muslim leader of a democratic Commonwealth country!
What better way to counter the outrage back home in Malaysia, if he could have gotten away with it!
So, Will Najib succeed none the less in putting the Queen into what amounts to a shockingly embarrassing diplomatic situation, whether it takes place after or just before Anwar’s show trial?
Specifically, will Her Majesty stick it out and politely welcome her Malaysian guests and their festival designed as “an exchange of goodwill between East and West”, thereby endorsing the judicial persecution of Anwar, or will she take her ‘unclean’ Corgi dogs and head back off to Balmoral or Sandringham, leaving Kate and Sophie to do the honours?
Either way, Najib will stage himself at the centre of the Commonwealth family, in the middle of a Mugabi-style move against a legitimate opposition leader, who incidentally got more votes than him at the last election.
One of Us?
Perhaps the British need to wake up about Malaysia and where the real democratic instincts of that country lie politically?
As one senior Conservative politician on the All Party Committee on Malaysia explained to Sarawak Report:
“For Heaven’s sake, the chap went to Malvern [College], he’s one of us!”
This is a card that the suave British public school educated son of a former Malaysian prime minister has certainly played to perfection
over the years, winning supporters in Washington and London, while coshing democracy and human rights back home whenever his position seemed threatened.
But, the British should realise, that when it comes to politics, Najib Razak simply does not play cricket.
[To open Islamic Fashion Festival Slide Show: