KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 18 — Putrajaya must explain the details of former APCO Malaysia boss Paul Stadlen’s employment with the Prime Minister’s Office, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang said today.
The DAP parliamentary leader said this was now necessary after Stadlen was accused of heading the communications operations of the PMO and of issuing a curiously-timed statement during Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy conviction last week.
“Have we reached a stage where the prime minister has lost trust and confidence in Malaysian public relations and communications experts to be his PR guru that he had to depend on foreigners?” asked Lim, using the acronym for “public relations”.
Lim also said that he has submitted specific verbal questions to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, asking him to confirm an allegation made by the Sarawak Report website that Stadlen is allegedly being paid millions of ringgit for his communications policy.
Last week, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s conviction of Anwar for sodomising his former political aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, also keeping a five-year jail sentence.
Shortly after Anwar was delivered the guilty verdict on Tuesday, a statement from PMO was released, hailing the “independence” of the judiciary and pointing out that there have been many rulings against senior government figures.
Critics later questioned the PMO’s quick release of its response to the conviction, claiming that it suggests the possibility of collusion between the government and the judiciary.
Anwar himself, who was still in the dock when the statement was issued, touched on the matter when he interjected to address the panel of judges at the apex court.
The PMO subsequently explained that it had prepared press statements for both guilty and not guilty outcomes, insisting that this was normal procedure in any case involving public interest.
But Lim was unconvinced by the explanation, and continued to accuse Putrajaya of conspiring to imprison the federal opposition leader.
“The PMO communications team, under Paul Stadlen, acted with super-speed to defend the Federal Court’s judgment dismissing Anwar’s appeal, even before the completion of the Federal Court judicial process,” Lim said today.
“The alacrity of the PMO statement could only mean one thing, that they were privy or at least were in the know that the Federal Court would dismiss Anwar’s appeal and sent him back to jail.”
“Under such circumstances, how could the Malaysian public and the international community have confidence in a truly independent judiciary and just rule of law and that Anwar had a fair trial in the courts of the country?” the Gelang Patah MP added.
