KUALA LUMPUR: Former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad's latest U-turn in defending his former deputy, jailed opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is an insincere move.
Communication and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak said Tun Mahathir was driven by worry over the government’s setting up of a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into Bank Negara Malaysia's (BNM) foreign exchange (forex) market losses in the 1990s.
In order to save his own skin, Salleh said Tun Mahathir needs Anwar's support.
"Mahathir’s main concern is that Anwar will testify against him and that the truth behind the RM30 billion losses will be revealed.
"This, therefore, is merely a move by Mahathir to appease Anwar and was not made sincerely," he said in his blog post today.
In an interview with the UK’s The Guardian daily on Thursday, Tun Mahathir voiced support for Anwar, the very same man he sacked and saw imprisoned on charges of sodomy.
Tun Mahathir said that Anwar should be released from jail and allowed to contest in Parliamentary elections, adding that he was unjustly imprisoned.
Salleh said that Tun Mahathir's statement is both shocking and comical.
"If Anwar was really unjustly jailed then apologise for it. In essence, Mahathir is saying that Anwar was fixed up by a corrupt judiciary and that the judges were dishonest.
"That alone (is) tantamount to contempt of court, and saying so in a UK press interview is nothing short of trying to smear the image of the country," he added.
The 1990s forex scandal returned to the headlines after the New Straits Times published an interview with former Bank Negara assistant governor, Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid, in which he claimed that Bank Negara suffered foreign exchange losses of US$10 billion in the early 1990s.
Just a few days prior, the international media reported on declassified United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) papers which linked Tun Mahathir's administration to the Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF) scandal in the 1980s.
Mahathir has since downplayed the report, saying that it does not directly link him to the scandal.