I tried to cut short the article for simple reading.
Najib Greases His Way To Washington D.C
And so it has finally happened. Najib, the Prime Minister of Malaysia was thrown a few crumbs, a few brief moment to savour, exchanging pleasantries with US President Obama on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.
And so it has finally happened. Najib, the Prime Minister of Malaysia was thrown a few crumbs, a few brief moment to savour, exchanging pleasantries with US President Obama on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.
What irks me about this non-event meeting is that we had to resort to employing a very expensive public relations firm (APCO), for which read grubby Washington lobbyists, for close to 25 million US$ dollars, give or take a million dollars here and there.Small change I suppose when it is not your hard-earned money.
Maintaining diplomatic missions abroad requires a huge budget, and ours in Washington D.C must cost us an arm and a leg. So Malaysian tax payers have every right to expect to get value for money, especially when we were assured by Prime Minister Najib that his choice of our ambassador to the US was based on the gentleman’s credentials, whatever those might be.
One of his qualifications, so we were told, was that he had developed extensive networking, Washington D.C style, into a fine art, and could be reasonably expected to pave the way for getting Malaysia into the inside track.
Our man in D.C. could not, on this occasion, even arrange a fleeting “hello and goodbye” meeting without resorting, in the time honoured Malaysian culture of corruption, to that offensive practice euphemistically referred to as “cheque book diplomacy.”
The Prime Minister could not have picked a better candidate for the job, and I wonder if there would ever be an end to the perceived sleaziness, rightly or wrongly, that has come to be associated with Najib. For the all our sakes, the Prime Minister has to be a little more circumspect and open in his dealings.
What has this visit achieved for the money and time expended?
A photo opportunity at most for Najib, but for Malaysia, toeing submissively the American/Israeli policy against Iran. We decried Bush’s attack on Iraq because we were not convinced that the claimed weapons of mass destruction really existed.
Why are we so quick of the mark this time to believe the Israeli-inspired conspiracy against Iran? Where is the incontrovertible evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons? What have we done to urge the Americans to dismantle Israeli nuclear warheads?
Anyone familiar with the workings of the American system on the international policy level will realise that no matter how often you meet Obama, nothing will happen unless the very powerful pro-Jewish Congressional committees want it to happen.
Rather than swimming in circles in the murky Potomac inhabited by totally disreputable money-grabbing grey-suited lobbyists just to pay homage to the White House, it would be easier and a great deal less costly to recognise Israel.
(Malaysia currently does not recognise Isreal and banned all Jewish goods and products....except for APCO Ha! Ha! Ha!)
All this pretence that it does not exist has to make way for a pragmatic new policy. We have to exorcise the ghost of Mahathir’s rabid anti-Jewish ghost or we will get nowhere.
I recall in 2006 while serving with the UN in New York I was invited to deliver a talk at a conference in Jerusalem. They wanted to know why Malaysia did not recognise Israel and, yet at the same time our government leaders saw nothing wrong in depositing huge sums of money in Israeli banks.
By all means get close to Washington, Najib, but not at any cost.
No comments:
Post a Comment