The White House's petition website should be blocked by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) as it was an avenue for "foreign powers to cause chaos" in Malaysia.

This startling claim was made in Parliament today by BN's Simpang Renggam MP Liang Teck Meng ( left ) today when asking for the site to be blacklisted by the relevant authorities.

He was referring to a recent White House petition which garnered the required 100,000 signatures to ask that the United States make the release of Anwar Ibrahim a priority in its foreign policy.

In his debate in the Dewan Rakyat, Liang said that the White House lost its "credibility" by allowing the pro-Anwar petition, claiming that he did not believe it was a "mistake" to initially take down the petition and later reinstate it.

The petition collected over 30,000 signatures in its final 48 hours before its deadline, bringing it past the 100,000 mark.

It was taken down temporarily during a fraud check but reinstated later with all signatures intact.

"I can't believe that the number of signatories can go up by 30,000 just in a few hours. I'm very sad that Malaysians have been used and fooled by the White House," he added.

 

Liang however made no mention of the anti-Anwar petition on the same site which was later taken down and reinstated with 60,000 signatures less after being found to have contained fraud signatures.

 

He also caused a stir when he mentioned the petition was started by Pakatan, before being corrected by Rafizi Ramli (PKR-Pandan) who stated the petition was started by former US ambassador to Malaysia John R Malott ( right ), an American citizen.

 

"This has nothing to do with us," Rafizi said.

 

Upon request by deputy speaker Ronald Kiandee, Liang then corrected his statement to the petition being "started by some parties and supported by Pakatan."

Claims rubbished

Meanwhile, PKR's Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar rubbished claims that the the petition platform, dubbed 'We The People', was to allow the US to intervene in other country's domestic affairs.

 

Nurul said such claims were only aimed at distracting from a counter petition initiated by BN supporters on the same platform, where 60,000 of 72,000 were found to have been obtained through fraud.

 

Instead, Nurul, who is also PKR vice president, said Malaysia should emulate a similar system.

 

"I call upon our Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to establish a similar democratic mechanism for 'We the Rakyat' to raise any issues with at least 10,000 signatures (as we are smaller than the US) for our premier to respond to," she said.