(NST) THE MOST salient established fact surrounding Teoh Beng Hock is that he is dead, the tragic demise of a young man with the potential of a brilliant political future. Another established fact was that hours before his death, Teoh was intensively interviewed by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission over investigations into the alleged misuse of state allocations by Pakatan Rakyat assemblymen at the MACC Selangor headquarters in Plaza Masalam, Shah Alam.
Teoh’s timetable with the MACC is well produced - questioning from 5pm on Wednesday to 3.45am on Thursday and then a break at 6am before resumption of questioning at 8am. However, precious little is known from the time he took that 6am break to 1.45pm when his sprawled body was discovered. Hence, the conjectures and suppositions flew in like Molotov cocktails.
What is still being established is how and why, and to a certain extent, where the Seri Kembangan assemblyman Ean Yong Hian Wah’s political secretary died. How he died is now a subject of massive speculations germinating from a very imaginative public roiling in plausibility and probabilities, and aggravated by untrammelled anger, mounting disbelief and involuntary emotionalism, mostly from senior colleagues of Teoh’s DAP to automatically recriminate the MACC, the last people reported to have been in proximity with Teoh.
There are already reports that claimed that Teoh fell to his death although this has not been fully established, merely inference based on how the body was found at the 5th floor of an adjacent building and its consistencies with a fall next the building housing the MACC. There are unsubstantiated claims too that he was either pushed out of the MACC interrogation room on the 14th floor and that was how his body was found sprawled on the adjacent building.
After that came the counter-reports on why Teoh died: he committed suicide because he could not endure the intense questioning. There are also the sub-plots of his “suicide”: he was so full of remorse and could not face his colleagues because he had whistle-blown on everyone involved.
Shoring up the speculation would be this ridiculous conspiracy theory: since Teoh was spilling the beans on his Pakatan colleagues, underworld figures cannot allow this to happen and quickly dispatched an assassin to “silence” him. And he could easily have been killed elsewhere and dumped at where he was found to beef up someone’s or some agency’s culpability.
If MP for Wangsa Maju Wee Choo Keong’s allegation that a certain Selangor Exco member had used his office as a rendezvous point for people connected to the underworld, then the assassination lead is plausible but in all probabibility, could only exist in a fantastic Hollywood movie script.
The crux of the argument is that everything is plausible and probable, but nothing makes sense, at least not in the evidence adduced so far by the forensic team to find out how and why exactly Teoh died. At this point of time, his death cannot yet be truly classified into anything, not murder and not suicide. For all we know, Teoh might have slipped on a banana skin and fell to his death, as absurd as it sounds.
Also, the point of the matter is that while police are investigating Teoh’s death, speculations and inferences help nobody but blabbermouths and rumour-mongers with a very public agenda to succeed. A thorough investigation is mandated, a Royal Commission of Inquiry if necessary, as exhorted by Khairy Jamaluddin, who beat Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim to the punch in calling for the RCI.
But Khairy has an addendum to his outrage: he had been shadowing Kit’s Tweeter alerts and has cautioned the DAP strongman that while the truth is desired, Kit should not jump to conclusions. “We want the truth but @limkitsiang should be very careful w/ his tweets & not insinuate anything,” Khairy stated in his Tweeter.
If Kit and gang can form a mob of candlelight vigil outside the Selangor MACC headquarters and rant that the MACC wasted their time by being stubbornly silent on all inquiries, the inverse could also be stated that Teoh’s death, while catastrophic, was also the perfect opportunity to be capitalised upon to distract attention from the investigations into the PR assemblymen’s misuse of state allocations.
Furthermore, can the same MACC officials conducting the misuse of funds probe continue with their arduous task? For now, it looks impossible, seeing that calls for them to be suspended are relentless. And that too, the devil’s advocate would chime, would be very convenient for the suspects in the probe.
Already, the DAP-inspired mob vigil has had a scrape with police and the arrests inevitable. What the police don’t need now is a counter demonstration that will likely escalate into something uglier. But human beings being what they are, especially politicians with testosterones to burn and the choir to appease, altercations like these are the convenient sleight of hand to deflect attention from the real issue, whatever they may be.
There were also premature calls that the MACC review its standard operating procedure for conducting interviews of persons of interest to an ongoing case. This is not helpful because it insinuates that the MACC is at fault when we don’t even know yet how and why Teoh died. The MACC may or may not realise it but the circumstances leading to Teoh’s death could also make the agency look like a textbook patsy.
There are just too many complex questions that can be asked as to how and why Teoh died. If you were to play devil’s advocate, you could conjure leads in all the players involve - MACC, Pakatan Rakyat and the Selangor Government. For now, it’s all too confusing and every demands made now merely inflames already fraught emotions.
Let the authorities probe the death first, scrupulously, meticulously and methodically, so as to check blame from being tactlessly assigned. In the meantime, the best thing to help Teoh, and his family, gain privacy and some measure of closure is to bite your tongue, keep your trap shut and zip it, at least in public, for the stoking of communal flames is far more deadly than the tragic death of a junior politician.
Pakatan to ensure Teoh’s spectre haunts BN
(The Malaysian Insider) KUALA LUMPUR, July 18 – Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders have signalled at a gathering last night that Teoh Beng Hock’s death will spearhead a nationwide campaign geared at countering Barisan Nasional’s (BN) incessant attack against the opposition alliance.
Its leaders, galvanised by Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, accused the anti-graft body, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), of being an out-and-out tool of the Umno-led BN federal government.
Whether PR is crying foul play over Teoh’s death is unclear but the opposition pact have so far made subtle hints that the investigations on PR lawmakers, which they claim is a form of harassment, is somehow connected to the incident.
“This is all an effort to weaken Pakatan,” Anwar told a press conference held at PAS headquarters here earlier.
Among those present are the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and several other PR leaders in what appears to be a show of renewed solidarity following a recent spate of spats.
PR also reiterated their call for a royal panel to be set up to probe the cause of Teoh’s death, remaining firm that it will not swallow government explanations on the matter.
The nationwide campaign, which starts with the funeral of Teoh on Monday, will be the platform to gather support and bring pressure to bear on the BN government.
Its leaders, galvanised by Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, accused the anti-graft body, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), of being an out-and-out tool of the Umno-led BN federal government.
Whether PR is crying foul play over Teoh’s death is unclear but the opposition pact have so far made subtle hints that the investigations on PR lawmakers, which they claim is a form of harassment, is somehow connected to the incident.
“This is all an effort to weaken Pakatan,” Anwar told a press conference held at PAS headquarters here earlier.
Among those present are the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and several other PR leaders in what appears to be a show of renewed solidarity following a recent spate of spats.
PR also reiterated their call for a royal panel to be set up to probe the cause of Teoh’s death, remaining firm that it will not swallow government explanations on the matter.
The nationwide campaign, which starts with the funeral of Teoh on Monday, will be the platform to gather support and bring pressure to bear on the BN government.
The Honeymoon’s Over
With the passing of the first 100 days of Najib’s Administration, the honeymoon is really over, for the Opposition party members, that is. Now it seems that the kids’ gloves are off, either that or his incompetence is really showing and his lack of control of the party apparatus is overtly evident.
For Teoh Beng Hock, Najib’s ineptitude can never be justified nor rectified ever again because he is no longer with us. Why must Teoh make the ultimate sacrifice just because the government sees fit to enlist former cops to man this new agency? Corruption was, and still is a crime that does not merit the death penalty, especially when Teoh is merely assisting in MACC’s investigations and not even considered a suspect.
Is it therefore standard procedure for MACC to apprehend and interrogate all the people they consider capable of assisting the agency in their investigations? If they can sentence a non-suspect to death, what will they do the real criminal who admits his or her crime voluntarily (without hardship persuasion)? Death for the entire family?
Instead of having just one single enforcement agency causing custodial deaths, now we have two. Might as well start building the ovens now because the new apartheid/Nazi laws will be implemented soon enough. The public’s confidence in the PDRM is already at an all time low and yet we must now suffer MACC’s judge-jury-executioner actions as well. What is next? Death squads to collect water and electricity bills? Death penalty for illegal parking?
When one is found guilty of a crime like drug trafficking and first degree murder and sentenced to death, there is the full course of law to ensure that the execution is performed in accordance to the law after all avenues of appeals have been exhausted. This is usually by hanging. Now we have a new type of execution method but without ensuring that the full course of law has been observed.
When Black South Africans accidentally kept falling off the windows from tall buildings, the Special Squad always has a ready answer, none of this “Gua Tak Tahu” business. Regardless of the fact that these Black South Africans kept falling from the windows of the security agency buildings (and practically nowhere else), at least they kept issuing standard responses to the public instead of saying that they don’t know. Another standard response was to say that the suspect was killed while attempting to escape. Let’s hope this does not happen here.
First political death in the country during Najib’s Administration and it does not bode well for all Malaysians as it has just been 100 days. TDM used the ISA to incarcerate his enemies but they walked out from Kamunting alive. Will Najib take it a step further?
For Teoh Beng Hock, Najib’s ineptitude can never be justified nor rectified ever again because he is no longer with us. Why must Teoh make the ultimate sacrifice just because the government sees fit to enlist former cops to man this new agency? Corruption was, and still is a crime that does not merit the death penalty, especially when Teoh is merely assisting in MACC’s investigations and not even considered a suspect.
Is it therefore standard procedure for MACC to apprehend and interrogate all the people they consider capable of assisting the agency in their investigations? If they can sentence a non-suspect to death, what will they do the real criminal who admits his or her crime voluntarily (without hardship persuasion)? Death for the entire family?
Instead of having just one single enforcement agency causing custodial deaths, now we have two. Might as well start building the ovens now because the new apartheid/Nazi laws will be implemented soon enough. The public’s confidence in the PDRM is already at an all time low and yet we must now suffer MACC’s judge-jury-executioner actions as well. What is next? Death squads to collect water and electricity bills? Death penalty for illegal parking?
When one is found guilty of a crime like drug trafficking and first degree murder and sentenced to death, there is the full course of law to ensure that the execution is performed in accordance to the law after all avenues of appeals have been exhausted. This is usually by hanging. Now we have a new type of execution method but without ensuring that the full course of law has been observed.
When Black South Africans accidentally kept falling off the windows from tall buildings, the Special Squad always has a ready answer, none of this “Gua Tak Tahu” business. Regardless of the fact that these Black South Africans kept falling from the windows of the security agency buildings (and practically nowhere else), at least they kept issuing standard responses to the public instead of saying that they don’t know. Another standard response was to say that the suspect was killed while attempting to escape. Let’s hope this does not happen here.
First political death in the country during Najib’s Administration and it does not bode well for all Malaysians as it has just been 100 days. TDM used the ISA to incarcerate his enemies but they walked out from Kamunting alive. Will Najib take it a step further?