Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim engaged in a heated exchange with Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaludin in Parliament today. - Reuters pic
KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim today linked Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “1 Malaysia” to a previous campaign called “1 Israel”, pushing a sensitive point in a country opposed to the Zionist regime.
Debating heatedly with Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin in parliament, the opposition leader claimed Najib’s image consultants, Apco Worldwide, were led by Israelis who worked on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s campaign called “1 Israel”.
Despite resounding taunts from the floor, Anwar continued to claim that the consultancy was led by two Israeli leaders, one who was formerly the Israeli ambassador to the US.
“Ehud Barak hired the same company, Apco, in 1999 and they advised him to use the same concept of 1 Malaysia. And just last year, Apco advised Najib to use 1 Malaysia. You can interpret the rest on your own,” the PKR leader said
This, he added, proved that it was not true that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) was a
At this juncture, Khairy, who is also the Rembau MP stood up to demand that Anwar showed evidence that the “1 Israel” concept was a brainchild of Apco.
Labelling the former deputy prime minister “complicit”, Khairy then questioned Anwar’s relationship with Paul Wolfowitz, known to be one of the architects to the US war against Iraq. Amid the barrage of angry shouts, Anwar admitted to his acquaintance with Wolfowitz saying he had nothing to hide and that he had met with Wolfowitz when he was a lecturer in the John Hopkins University after he was released from prison.
Earlier, Khairy clashed with Anwar first when he interrupted the parliamentary leader in his speech on how the PR-led governments had been wrongly painted as anti-Malay.
Anwar said that this was not true for the PR in Perak and in Terengganu had awarded land rights not only to the Chinese but also to a large community of the Malays.
“But when there was a shift in power, the BN stopped these policies. They cancelled them. Yet they say we are anti-Malays,” he said.
Anwar added that the BN was the one who had been awarding “mountains” to gambling tycoons, referring to the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong and his gambling haven of Genting Highlands.
“You can award mountains, hills to them,” he said.
Khairy then poked fun at Anwar and said, “Did you not award this same mountain to the so-called gambling tycoon when you were finance minister? Is this not true? Why don’t you answer that?” he said.
He went on to claim that Anwar had also been seen on video dancing with “the daughter of the gambling tycoon”. “You deny this? Is this not true?” he said amid raucous laughter.
Anwar then admitted to dancing but accused BN’s Muslim leaders of “guzzling” alcohol.
“They see me dance a little and they talk a lot but when it comes to them, it is ok to guzzle alcohol,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment