KUALA LUMPUR, June 12 — PKR vice-president Zuraida Kamaruddin said today she believed that the sex videos implicating a senior party leader, who is also a minister, were fake and meant to assassinate the latter’s political career.
Zuraida also said she believed the sex videos were released now as the ruling government nears the two-year mark when Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is meant to hand over power to PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Pakatan Harapan previously presented the time period for the transition after winning the 14th general election on May 9 last year.
“I believed they’re all fake and it’s a conspiracy to kill [the person’s] political career like in the case of DSAI,” Zuraida told Malay Mail.
Last night, Muhammad Haziq Abdul Aziz, the senior private secretary to Primary Industries Deputy Minister Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin, allegedly admitted on his Facebook page to being the other person in the video that purportedly features a PKR leader.
Haziq’s Facebook page also describes him as the PKR Youth Santubong chief.
The implicated minister’s press secretary told Malay Mail today that his office would release a statement once more information is obtained.
Several videos of roughly 90 seconds each began circulating on social media early yesterday morning and depict a man performing sexual acts on another man that allegedly resembles a minister.
Malay Mail could not reach Shamsul Iskandar for comment.
Such allegations are not unprecedented in PKR.
Anwar was previously accused of sodomy twice — in 1998 and again in 2008 — involving two different men. Dr Mahathir had sacked Anwar in 1998 as deputy prime minister over alleged corruption and sodomy, though the court overturned Anwar’s sodomy conviction in 2004.
The PKR leader was convicted in his second sodomy trial under the Najib administration, but the Yang di-Pertuan Agong granted him a royal pardon and freed him shortly after PH won the 2018 election.
In 2011, the PKR president was also a target of a similar sex video released by former associate Datuk Shazryl Eskay Abdullah along with Datuk Shuib Lazim and Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik, collectively known as the “Datuk T” trio.
