KUALA LUMPUR, April 9 — Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Mulian Amin today rejected a motion to debate the white paper on the 1985 Memali massacre, despite Pakatan Rakyat (PR) MPs claim of new information challenging its accuracy.
The private motion was submitted by Pokok Sena PAS MP Datuk Mahfuz Omar, who argued that the recent revelation made by former deputy prime minister Tun Musa Hitam invalidated the government’s official account of the deadly standoff between the police and followers of an Islamic sect on November 19, 1985 in Memali, Kedah.
“This revelation means the White Paper on Memali is false. It cancels out the government’s account of the incident that marked a dark period,” Mahfuz said when attempting to table the motion.
Deputy Speaker Datuk Ismail Mohamad Said said, however, that the motion had been rejected earlier by Pandikar and that he was bound by the decision.
Mahfuz later told reporters that Pandikar rejected the motion after judging the revelation to be “hearsay” as Musa had made the statement in a forum.
The Pokok Sena MP related Pandikar also pointed out that the proposal was based on news reports, and that there was no veracity to the revelation which did not make it urgent for debate.
Musa, a former deputy prime minister, told a forum in Kota Baru, Kelantan last month that then-prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was present in the country when police raided the small village where PAS leader Ibrahim Mahmud — also known as Ibrahim Libya — was teaching, killing 14 civilians including Ibrahim.
It was previously reported that Dr Mahathir had been away in China at the time.
“If Dr Mahathir was present in the country then everything that was said in the White Paper is inaccurate. This makes it imperative that the paper is rejected as the official account of the Memali incident,” Mahfuz, who is also vice-president for PAS, said.
He also said the revelation showed the need for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to establish the truth about what had happened in Memali as those purportedly involved in the incident are still alive.
Musa had said that on the day of the incident, he and the acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) had met Dr Mahathir in his office and the latter had given a brief on what happened following the police operation in Memali involving the death of 4 policemen and 14 civilian.
He added that he had asked Dr Mahathir to postpone his pending visit to China, and cited three reasons: the incident had taken place in the prime minister’s home state of Kedah; it had involved Malay Muslims; and the postponement would convey the perception that the head of the country’s government was concerned and gave priority for a domestic crisis.
The 79-year-old has drawn consternation from politicians on both sides of the aisle with his disclosure at a public forum on March 27.
Opposition lawmakers have demanded a royal inquiry into the Memali incident that had stained and cast a stigma on Islamist party, PAS.
Musa, the first of Dr Mahathir’s four deputies in the latter’s 22-year-long administration, said that his intent in revisiting the issue was not to cause a “new polemic”.
He pointed out that his remarks were only in response to the moderator of the talk, Datuk Dr Mohammad Agus Yusoff, and commended the associate professor with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for providing him a platform to “correct the facts of history on an important event involving myself”.
