5.30pm yesterday evening, was alerted by one in the team that a police report was due to be made at the Taiping police IPD against YB Nga Kor Ming, the member of parliament for Taiping.
The complaint, so the information went, was that the YB had the audacity to recite verses from the Holy Qur’an at a ceramah the night before.
Gan, Ariff and I got to the balai by about 5.40pm.
Other media members were already waiting at the entrance to the balai. Someone had obviously gone to great lengths to leak the story.
Ariff and I stepped into the balai to inquire if such a report had been lodged.
The officer manning the frontdesk kindly checked and confirmed that no such report had been lodged.
As we walked back to the entrance, we saw the entourage.
The person who appeared to be leading the pack, Hj Osman Abu Bakar, Ketua Umum / Presiden of Barisan Bertindak Perpaduan Melayu (BBPM ), was persuaded to speak to the media before the group entered the balai to lodge the report.
By this, he contended, YB Nga had ‘mempersendakan Islam’. He went on quite a bit about this until someone else stepped into the limelight.
He picked up where Osman had left off.
“Islam dipersendakan”, he asserted, almost as if both he and Osman were parroting from a script.
He went on.
“Niat YB Nga adalah untuk menghina Islam, meghina orang Melayu dan mecabar hak istimewa orang Melayu”, he insisted.
And I thought, “Oh God, more of this rubbish from these monkeys”.
Asked what they hoped to achieve by making the report, Hassan justified it on the basis of Fardhu Khifayah, that it behoved every Muslim to step forward and correct this wrong done towards Islam.
I’d heard enough and removed myself from the ongoing press conference, stepping out of the balai compound for a smoke.
The group stepped into the balai to lodge the report.
I thought it was over.
Wrong.
Hasssan was out again, this time singing like a canary.
And he seemed to have forgotten the script.
The man just wouldn’t stop talking, even as he was being pumped with questions by the media, but he seemed most interested in the camera man from NTV7 / TV3.
He volunteered that the mufti of Perak was waiting to be interviewed on this issue, and that the camera man from NTV7 / TV3 should hurry to do that interview so that they could run the story that night. In fact, he suggested that the views of Tok Guru Nik Aziz be also sought on the issue.
Hassan had just inadvertantly disclosed that an elaborate plan of sorts had been hatched.
Somewhere along the way, the man forgot himself and disclosed that he was the timbalan ketua cawangan UMNO bahagian Bagan Datoh. Those who are not familiar, this is the constituency of Datuk Zahid Hamidi, one of the three newly elected vice-presidents of UMNO and the one who has been hankering to lick Najib’s boots.
Having made this disclosure, he was now pressed if the report might not be politically motivated, although he had just earlier insisted that the police report coupled with some well-timed media reports would make for a good polemic on the issue.
He conceded that it was political.
Then he dropped the bombshell.
If the TV could get this news out, complete with the interview with the eagerly awaiting mufti, by the next day (today), they’d put together a video clip showing an excerpt of YB Nga’s speech together with excerpts from the news report, burn 50,000 CDs and flood Bukit Gantang with the same.
Asked on whose instructions he was acting, he replied that instructions for this came from the very top.
By this time, there was little talk about defending Islam.
No these were not defenders of Islam.
These ae manipulators of the faith and its adherents, for any little they can gain for themselves!
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