KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 — Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor accused Malaysiakini of being a tool of the US intelligence agency and “Christians” after the news portal reported the blackout of an electronic billboard depicting Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the party headquarters last night.

In a series of Twitter messages, the Putrajaya MP uploaded a picture of the report accompanied by a post accusing Malaysiakini of malicious intention in publishing the article.

“Let us remember that to visit this site is wrong. This is the work of the Christians and CIA whom are spying on us now,” Tengku Adnan said on his Twitter handle @TengkuAdnanReal.

The picture, which has been circulated on the Internet, showed the giant-sized portraits of Umno’s past and incumbent presidents all lit up, with the exception of Dr Mahathir’s.

Malay Mail Online visited the Putra World Trade Centre here this afternoon and was told that the light on Dr Mahathir’s portrait had failed to light up due to a loose connector, which was fixed later the same night.

“It was just the connector. It was loose. So we fixed it back last night. Nothing major,” the building’s electrical engineer who gave his name as Mr Hui said.

The incident caused a stir on the Internet. It is understood that Dr Mahathir’s supporters were informed about it and some had the photo of the darkened billboard up on their blogs.

Speaking to Malay Mail Online, Tengku Adnan said the matter was a “non-issue” and accused Malaysiakini of malice in publishing the report.

“Why must they play it up? They had bad intention. It wasn’t even anything,” he said.

Acknowledging that the issue has since gone viral on Twitter, the Putrajaya MP said he was frustrated that many had actually believed the news report and allowed themselves to be fooled by “America”.

“I am upset that so many can be easily fooled by the Westerners, especially America, that the electronic media is clearly spying on us (sic)”.

He then posted a vague message telling Malaysians to “use them but not to be used by them”.

“Use them to benefit us not for them to learn about our minds. Once the mind is captured then we all want AMERICAN DREAMS remember CIA MOSSAD,” he wrote, with the latter referring to Israeli intelligence agency.

Malaysiakini was in the past accused of working covertly for the CIA, although the claims came during the administration of Dr Mahathir who, ironically after his retirement, agreed to give the online news portal an interview in 2007.

The news portal denied the allegation.

Separately, Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin also denied that his party intentionally blacked out Dr Mahathir’s portrait and criticised Malaysiakini for the news report.

The youth and sports minister said the report reaffirmed Umno’s allegations that the news portal was pro-opposition and not neutral as it claims to be.