Update on the case against Muhyiddin

Okay. So the situation with Tansiri Muhedin Yassin, the former prime minister of Malaysia who was called into the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission yesterday, And I guess he was held there for many hours for interrogation, I assume. And apparently, supposedly, he's gonna be facing charges in court. He's put out a statement talking about what happened when he was, at the, commission and what they are alleging or what their points of concern are. And to be honest, it's it's even worse than I thought it was in terms of the political and PR catastrophe that this is for the Pakistan Harappan b n government coalition government.

Now I could be wrong, but as I understand it, there's two things, two main things that they are concerned with. One is a program called, I think, Jannah Wibawah that Muhaddin initiated while he was prime minister that was an economic sort of relief or, assistance program targeting Malay Bumiputra, contractors, helping their businesses. There were officials allegedly in the Muhedin government who took bribes to seek to it that certain contractors would get allocations of money. So the allegation is that they were taking payoffs in order to make sure that certain contractors were going to get money would be favored by the Jainabiwawa program. Presumably, they have evidence.

There are two men who have been charged with allegedly taking bribes. So Muhaddin initiated a beneficial program of economic relief and support for Malay, business people. And allegedly, some people below him who were in charge of allocating that money took bribes and gave favors in the allocation of that money. Not Muhedin, somebody else. His only crime would have been setting up a program for the benefit of the malaise, for the benefit of professional contractors, malaise, bumiputra, businesses to make sure that they could survive and thrive, during the pandemic.

Then the other one is that there is there was an organization that supports Islam and Muslims, which received because of its religious categorization, received a tax exemption under the previous government of Pakistan Harappan, that tax exemption was canceled. The man who ran that organization appealed against that cancellation and asked for the tax exemption status to be reinstated. When he was prime minister, said, we'll look at it. We will look at your appeal, if everything is in order, the tax exemption will be restored. The tax exemption was restored.

Muhedin maintains that with regards to the first issue, he had no input in who would receive funds from the Jannah Wibawah project. You had to fulfill a certain criteria, and then he had, you know, bureaucratic officials to implement that. And in the other case, he said, I had nothing to do with whether or not the tax exemption status was restored for that organization. The bank account for Bersatu, Mahedin's party, was frozen by the Malaysia Anti Corruption Commission while they try to figure out whether or not there's money in there that's not supposed to be there, whether or not there's, for example, money that was put in there as bribes. Obviously, that action leading up to the state elections would have crippled Bersatto's ability to campaign and to support their candidates in the state elections if they had no access to their bank accounts.

Of course, Bersatto and Parikhita Nacional and Muhedin maintain that the only money that's in their account is political donations, legal political donations. So the way this is gonna look for, Malay voters and young voters, The man who initiated a very good program is gonna be punished for the alleged abuse of power of people beneath him who implemented that program, corruptly. And then on the second issue, it's going to look to Malays, to Muslims that this government doesn't believe that an organization that promotes Islam and helps Muslims should be tax exempt. So that's gonna look like you're discriminating against Muslims, particularly given the fact that it was the government of Pakistan Harapan that canceled the tax exemption in the first place. So the whole thing looks like a discrimination against Malays, against Muslims.

That's the way it's gonna look to people, and it will look like the political party bank account was frozen specifically to undermine and sabotage the ability of Paracatana Nationale and Bersatu to campaign in the state elections. I'm just talking about from a PR and political point of view. The way this is gonna look to everybody that this is a clear case of political persecution. It is a politically motivated prosecution, with the goal of undermining Paracatana Nacional, which is the opposition party, and it is the leading contender for, ascending to power when the term for this government ends. It it really doesn't look good.

I thought that I was gonna read that Mahedin had taken a bunch of money that he that he had allocated this money for, Malay businesses, and instead he put it in his pocket. That's not even what they're alleging. They're alleging that he allocated all of this money for businesses for Malay businesses, and other people took bribes in the allocation of those funds. It's very difficult to see based on what they have revealed so far, how Mahedin is implicated in any wrongdoing.