Umno has served up a red herring in the shape of a sex video which was meant to make us take our eyes off the ball. They wanted us to forget about Sarawak and its chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud.

The end game of the latest sex video is not an attempt by Umno to hide its failures or an attempt to bring down opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. The true intention of Umno is to preoccupy us and bombard us with the details of this sex scandal so that we lose our focus - Sarawak.

Umno’s attempts to discredit Anwar are getting clumsier and cruder by the day. It is a deliberate attempt at character assassination by people whose own reputations are themselves sullied.

rahmi thamby chik in bukit aman police front Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik ( centre in picture ) is one of the people behind this sex video. He was allegedly involved with an underaged girl. He is sore that in 1994, his ticket to millions was cut short by allegations of his sexual indiscretions.

Instead of being prosecuted, Umno kept him firmly in the fold, possibly as a “sleeper” to do its dirty work in the future. Perhaps this is what that sex video is all about.

It was Lim Guan Eng, a DAP MP, who was jailed for sedition when he tried to seek justice for the girl concerned. The girl’s grandmother had pleaded with Lim to help her family. She did not go to the Umno Malays to help her. That must say a lot about what ordinary Malays think of the political party which is supposedly theirs. Umno Malays maintained an unhealthy silence to protect one of their own.

We do not know if Rahim was put up to this latest scandal by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. Two decades ago, Rahim is said to have escaped a heavy jail sentence by doing a deal with Mahathir. Now, perhaps, it has come time to return the favour and come to the defence of Umno.

It is quite possible that if Rahim had refused to help Umno, new incriminating evidence of the alleged links with the then-14 year old girl in 1994 would have materialised.

Who says new material cannot be unearthed at such a late stage? They did it for Teoh Beng Hock, didn’t they? The supposed ‘suicide note’ appeared months later, when the inquest into his mysterious death was nearing its conclusion.

This plan is only one of several that surfaced in the last few months. We had Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s personal ‘sperm bank’ and we’ve been entertained by Umi Hafilda Ali’s and her virginity test. Now we have this sex video.

Getting the people titillated

This red herring, the sex video, has been planned with little games in place. It has got the people titillated. Is it Anwar in the movie or is it not? Is it Anwar’s doppelgänger or is it the despicable Shazryl Eskay Abdullah? Why was the Carcosa hotel selected? Why were the police slow to act?

This is what Umno wanted - to distract us from Sarawak.

azlan The reality is that Najib wants to hide the problems of Sarawak from us.

Taib Mahmud is in trouble. He is suffering from a two-pronged attack by Clare Rewcastle Brown and her weapons of mass deliverance (WMD) - the Sarawak Report website which details all of Taib’s corrupt and crooked business dealings, and Radio Free Sarawak which broadcasts interviews with ordinary people who have suffered at the hands of Taib.

The white-haired Taib, dubbed ‘The Termite’, has attracted much criticism over his unwillingness to step down or to groom his successors.

He has also been hit by successive waves of accusations of corruption and nepotism. The anti-graft body Transparency International Malaysia has added its voice in asking the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the allegations.

azlan The problem that Najib faces in Sarawak is Taib’s reluctance to hand over the reins. There are some who believe that Taib should not contest the polls; others feel that only he is capable of holding the coalition together and delivering the resource-rich state to Putrajaya, which considers Sarawak and Sabah as its “fixed-deposit” vote bank.

Umno/BN are afraid of Anwar and Pakatan. There is no doubt about that. One has only to see the police intervention when Anwar spoke at a gathering in Gombak last Friday. The more Najib sends the thugs to silence Anwar, the more moderate Malaysians will end up supporting Anwar.

Anwar has become a symbol of oppression - his own, and ours. He has been pilloried and punched by the police before. And yet he has managed to drag himself up from the floor and become stronger.

Anwar being preoccupied with defending himself against this sex video was so that he would not be able to concentrate on Sarawak.

Taib running scared

Taib is running scared. He has attempted to enter the cyber-world with disastrous results. One victim of his foray into this cyber-war was the proofreader at the Borneo Post .

He corrected what he thought was a spelling error and inadvertently directed online readers to the original ‘Sarawak Report’ of Clare Rewcastle Brown. He has been sacked. This is Taib’s desperation and ruthlessness at work.

NONE The battle-lines in Sarawak are already drawn. A few days ago, Snap was exposed as a potential political frog and would have damaged Pakatan in Sarawak, just like the political frogs which damaged Pakatan in Perak three years ago.

Sarawak is causing sleepless nights in Putrajaya and for Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Even former finance minister Daim Zainuddin, who milked Malaysia dry, has now come out of the woodwork  to defend Umno/BN and Najib.

Sarawak has never experienced a more formidable opposition. In the past, Taib would have been able to intimidate, imprison or eliminate his opponents, if necessary. The sex video plan has backfired but there will be other dirty tactics up BN’s sleeves.

Anwar has galvanised Pakatan to such a degree that trying to topple him has become an impossible undertaking; a string of bounty hunters will get their shoulders to the task, to repay favours owed to Mahathir.

We can expect more fireworks in the run-up to Sarawak polling day.

 

 

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a non-conformist traditionalist from Perak, a bucket chemist and an armchair eco-warrior. In ‘real-speak’, this translates into that she comes from Ipoh, values change but respects culture, is a petroleum chemist and also an environmental pollution-control scientist.