Mahathir puts Saudi Arabia at a diplomatic arm’s length

Malaysian leader has reset ties with the Gulf kingdom, marking a shift away from the ultra-close ties cultivated by his predecessor Najib Razak

When news broke that US$681 million dollars had been transferred to the personal bank account of Malaysia’s then Prime Minister Najib Razak, investigators had already pieced together a trail linking the funds to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a sovereign fund now synonymous with one of the biggest heists in financial history.

Najib, however, had another explanation for where the millions came from: Saudi Arabia. For years, the now ex-premier denied any role in the massive embezzlement at 1MDB, claiming the funds found in his account were a “donation” from a Saudi prince offered in recognition for governing Malaysia according to “Islamic principles.”

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Ahmed Al-Jubeir vouched for Najib in 2016 when asked about the so-called donation, saying it was “genuine” and “given with nothing expected in return.” He pointed out that the then Attorney General of Malaysia had “found no wrongdoing” during investigations and that he considered the matter closed.

Adel now tells a different story. On a recent three-day visit to Malaysia, the first by Riyadh’s top diplomat since May elections returned Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to office, he admitted the millions received by Najib had “nothing to do with the Saudi government,” contradicting his earlier explanation which gave political cover to the ex-premier.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Surge of hangings in Singapore while Malaysia shuns death penalty

Despite appeals, a Malaysian citizen ensnared in neighboring Singapore’s capital punishment regime was not spared; he was one of four executed this week

Given the circumstances, conjuring a smile couldn’t have been easy. Still, Prabu N. Pathmanathan, a 31-year-old Malaysian convicted of drug trafficking, put on his best face when it came time for his final photographs to be taken. Despite a Malaysian government appeal for leniency, he would be hanged just hours later at Changi Prison in Singapore.

The young Malaysian, sentenced to death for couriering 7.97 ounces of heroin into the city-state in 2014, was among at least six individuals executed in Singapore this month for drug offenses. His fate was sealed after the President’s Office of Singapore rejected two petitions lodged by family members and civil society groups requesting clemency.

Though the Singapore Prison Service does not routinely release information about imminent executions apart from figures released in its annual report, anti-death penalty activists claim that seven executions have taken place since the beginning of October, including four this week.

Asia Times could not independently verify the figure. The wealthy Southeast Asian city-state is known to have conducted a total of eight executions in 2017 and four in 2016. An uptick in the use of capital punishment in Singapore comes as neighboring Malaysia announced earlier this month that it would abolish the death penalty for all crimes.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Anwar extends a hand of friendship to China

Malaysia’s heir apparent pushes cordial ties with Beijing amid differences over mega-projects and Uighur asylum-seekers

Fresh from a landslide by-election victory earlier this month that cemented his position as a ruling coalition lawmaker, veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim has stepped back into frontline politics and onto the world stage. The 71-year-old reform icon recently wrapped up a closely-watched three-day visit to China.

His trip comes amid speculation from certain quarters that Beijing has grown displeased over bilateral differences with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s administration, which has undertaken a strategic recalibration of ties with the world’s second-largest economy since clinching a surprise victory in May’s general election.

US$23 billion worth of Chinese-backed projects, including a coast-to-coast rail link and two gas pipelines, have since been cancelled or deferred by the Malaysian government, which accuses former premier Najib Razak’s scandal-and-corruption-besieged administration of unscrupulous borrowing to fund those projects.

Malaysia allowed 11 ethnic Uighur Muslim detainees, natives of China’s western Xinjiang province, to travel to Turkey in a bid to seek asylum earlier this month, defying a months-old request from Beijing for their repatriation on security grounds. China’s Foreign Ministry reacted in strong terms, saying it “resolutely” opposed the move.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Singapore and the EU fly the flag of free trade

At odds with US trade policy, Singapore and the European Union champion multilateralism with an eye toward a broader deal with Southeast Asian economies

Amid rising trade tensions between the two largest economies, the Asia-Europe Meeting Summit (ASEM) in Brussels last week saw leaders from both regions fly the so-called flag of free trade. Though there was no explicit mention of American trade policies in the meeting’s joint declaration, the spectre of unilateralism seemed to loom large over the proceedings.

It was here that Singapore and the European Union (EU) signed a landmark trade deal reputed to serve as the building blocks for a wider future trade pact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While sought for years, a trade deal linking the two regional organisations is still in the early stages of negotiations.

Negotiated for the better part of a decade, the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (EUSFTA) is a bid to improve business ties with the wealthy city-state, the EU’s top trading partner in Southeast Asia. The agreement, expected to come into force next year, has been touted as a boost for Singapore’s companies and their exports.

The deal also held symbolic importance, with Singapore’s Prime Minister Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong framing the effort as a bid to shore up a multilateral system that has come under severe stress, owing to certain countries resorting to protectionist unilateral actions and even explicitly repudiating multilateral approaches and institutions.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Unsolved murders coming back to haunt Najib

Ex-Malaysian premier says he welcomes fresh probes into suspicious killings during his tenure, but new evidence in the cold cases looks to link him to the crimes

Buffeted by charges of massive corruption, embezzlement and money-laundering related to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) financial scandal, Malaysia’s ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak could soon face charges of an altogether different sort: murder.

Persistent rumors of his alleged links to several high-profile murder cases during his tenure have prompted renewed calls for authorities to open fresh probes into a string of grisly killings of which Najib has always steadfastly denied any knowledge or association.

In a recent tit-for-tat exchange with veteran parliamentarian Lim Kit Siang, Najib appeared to welcome calls for the murder cases to be reopened and for special inquiries to be formed, declaring that it was time for “justice to be served” after bearing the brunt of what he says are slanderous accusations linking him with the killings.

“It is now time for justice to be served to me, the victims’ families, and to give room to all the Malaysian people who have accused and defamed me to regret what they have hurled,” the former premier said in a Facebook post earlier this month while accusing the Pakatan Harapan government and their “propaganda experts” of disparaging him.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Mahathir puts Uighur rights above China ties

Malaysian leader's move to send ethnic Uighur Muslim detainees to Turkey defied a Chinese extradition request and threatens to roil already strained bilateral relations

China and Malaysia’s relations are set for a new test after the Muslim-majority country freed 11 ethnic Uighur Muslim detainees it held on humanitarian grounds, ignoring a months-old request from Beijing for their repatriation on security grounds. The detainees had been charged with illegally entering Malaysia after escaping a jail in Thailand last November.

Malaysian prosecutors dropped charges against the Uighurs, a Turkic language-speaking Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to China’s western Xinjiang province. Last week they were allowed to travel to Turkey, where thousands have fled to seek asylum from Chinese persecution and are welcomed by Turkish nationalists who regard them as kin.

The Uighur detainees had been imprisoned in Thailand since 2014 and were ordered to remain in custody until their nationalities could be proven, a situation complicated by the fact that both China and Turkey claim them as their citizens. Twenty prisoners staged a jailbreak last year using blankets to scale barbed-wire fences, with some crossing into neighboring Malaysia.

“They have done nothing wrong in this country, so they are released,” Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told reporters in his first public comments on the issue since charges against the Uighur detainees were withdrawn. A statement by China’s Foreign Ministry, however, took a hard diplomatic line against the decision.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Malaysia’s Anwar one step closer to the top

The father of the nation's political reform movement clinched a landslide victory at Saturday's by-election, paving the way for his eventual assumption of the premiership

Anwar Ibrahim hasn’t lost his electoral shine. The father of Malaysia’s political reform movement clinched a landslide victory in a make-or-break by-election for the seaside constituency of Port Dickson on October 13, a poll seen as the first stepping stone on his path to assuming the role of prime minister.

The twice-jailed former opposition leader is slated to take the reins when incumbent Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad steps down in two years, though a clear timetable for the much-discussed transition has yet to be confirmed. Anwar, 71, had to first be elected as a parliamentarian as a prerequisite for assuming the top job, a criterion he has now fulfilled.

Contesting as the Pakatan Harapan government’s candidate, the veteran politician amassed a total of 31,016 votes, according to the Election Commission, trouncing runner-up Mohd Nazari Mokhtar, a candidate fielded by the Islamist opposition party Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) who pulled in 7,456 votes.

Turnout for the by-election hit 58.3%, just shy of the 60% target set by Anwar’s campaign. The veteran politician’s margin of victory – 23,560 votes – is, however, considerably higher than Harapan’s former parliamentarian Danyal Balagopal Abdullah’s 17,710 majority during May’s general election, when turnout hit 83.6%.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Malaysia’s Anwar on an impatient comeback trail

Politician's popularity as prime minister-in-waiting will be tested at this weekend's poll, a forced contest some feel puts undue pressure on incumbent premier Mahathir Mohamad

Months after being pardoned and released from prison, the man seen as Malaysia’s prime minister-in-waiting is staging a grand comeback to propel his political ascent. Unable to contest in May’s historic general election, veteran politician Anwar Ibrahim is looking to clinch a decisive majority in Saturday’s (October 12) parliamentary by-election in the seaside constituency of Port Dickson.

While the twice-jailed former opposition leader will by nearly all projections emerge victorious, a crowded field of seven candidates are vying to win the federal parliamentary seat in Negeri Sembilan, a coastal state roughly an hour’s drive from the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Thousands flocked to a campaign rally earlier this week to see Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad publicly endorse the man tipped to succeed him, sharing a stage with Anwar for the first time in two decades. From political allies to bitter rivals and back, the two men have retaken their places at the apex of Malaysia’s politics against all odds.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal ensnares Najib’s wife

Ex-First Lady Rosmah Mansor, an unabashed symbol of the ex-government's free-spending extravagance, now faces 17 charges of money laundering

At the height of their power, Malaysia’s then Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, appeared confident they had ridden out the storm of their alleged roles in a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal.

Domestic probes into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) development fund Najib created and oversaw as chairman of its advisory board had cleared him of any misconduct, critics had been sacked, rivals imprisoned and the largesse continued to flow.

The gilded pair now face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives behind bars on corruption-related charges. Malaysia’s former first couple have had their world turned upside down since the resounding electoral defeat of Najib’s ruling coalition in May.

Appearing on Thursday morning at a court in Kuala Lumpur, Rosmah, 66, pled not guilty to 17 charges, including money laundering, laid against her by prosecutors. She was arrested on October 3 by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), an anti-graft body investigating how billions of dollars went missing from 1MDB. Rosmah faces a potential 15 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

The world according to Mahathir

Malaysian premier is re-emerging as a strident yet pacifist spokesman for the non-aligned interests of the developing world

At 93-years-old, Mahathir Mohamad was the world’s oldest elected leader to address the recently concluded 73rd United Nations General Assembly in New York. Returning to the podium as Malaysia’s leader for the first time in nearly a generation, the veteran politician’s address lamented worsening political, economic and social conditions around the world.

His closely-watched and highly anticipated speech, which promised to set the direction of his new administration’s foreign policy, included a scathing appraisal of global power relations and a call to check the dominance of the UN Security Council’s five veto-wielding permanent members.

“When I last spoke here in 2003, I lamented how the world had lost its way. I bemoaned the fact that small countries continued to be at the mercy of the powerful,” said Mahathir, who served as Malaysia’s premier from 1981 to 2003 and last spoke at the UN’s General Assembly nearly a month before he stepped down as prime minister.

“But today – 15 years later – the world has not changed much. If at all the world is far worse than 15 years ago. Today the world is in a state of turmoil,” he told the assembly, citing an escalating trade war between the world’s two most powerful economies, rising acts of terrorism and militarism, and deteriorating social values that “undermine the stability” of nations.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.