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Thursday, December 23, 2010

New country - MalAPCO, PM Najib Abdul Razak

Breaking news!! A new country has just emerged - Malapco whose serving Prime Minister the country never elect is Najib Abdul Razak. At the risk of being unpatriotic (loyalty is not just singing praises for one's country but also exposing wrongs with objectives of reforms in mind), let me rewrite the name of the new country - MalAPCO.

Web definition of mal- a combining form meaning “bad,” “wrongful,” “ill,” occurring originally in loanwords from french ( malapert ); on this model, used in the formation of other words ( malfunction; malcontent ).


APCO Worldwide is an independent communications consultancy with more than 500 employees in 29 worldwide locations. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., APCO founded in 1984 by Margery Kraus specializing on handling sensitive political issues some say for many the world's bad repute dictators.


So who created this “bad,” “wrongful,” “ill,” country. Answer: Najib Abdul Razak who used tax payer's RM77 million a year (around RM1.5 million per week) to engage APCO massage the ruling UMNO/BN Federal government reputation. And we were told that if we don't reduce subsidies, the country will soon be bankrupt. That is hell lot of money for a country heading for bankruptcy. No wonder the "combining form" meaning bad got attached to the rest of the country name.

Actually, the term MalApco was coined by Dean Johns and you can read the rest of his article 1Malaysia or 1MalApco below with permission of Malaysiakini:

1Malaysia or 1MalApco?
Dean Johns
Dec 22, 10

It's tempting to wonder who is actually running Malaysia these days, in light of the fact that the BN regime has chosen to take the word of Apco Worldwide over that of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Apco has denied that it recycled Najib Abdul Razak's '1Malaysia' concept from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's old 'One Israel' campaign line.

The six-month suspension from Parliament of Anwar, for 'misleading' the House, and three other senior Pakatan Rakyat members - Karpal Singh, Azmin Ali and R Sivarasa - for contempt of the House, was in itself a total travesty.

But even more suspicious, and considerably more sinister, is the mysterious nature and purpose of the BN-Apco relationship itself.

The most burning question is still why Apco was hired in the first place; why BN, a regime so anti-Semitic that it refuses to this day to recognise the existence of Israel, would choose to retain the services of an Israeli-owned public relations and lobbying organisation.

This seems contradictory to such a bizarre degree that it's a case for the conspiracy theorists. Could it be that someone - or everyone - in BN is secretly in the pay of Mossad? Or covertly supporting the Zionist movement that Dr Mahathir Mohamad has long been convinced is plotting to take over the world?

Or could Apco be some spooky CIA-backed organisation that has been imposed on the BN regime the better to watch over US interests, or to monitor Malaysian trans-shipments of arms in breach of UN sanctions against terror-sponsoring states?

Of course, it could simply be the case that Apco was the only public relations consultancy on the planet that the lying BN regime could persuade to peddle its preposterous propaganda.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Apco's services apparently don't come cheap, at RM77 million per year, or around RM1.5 million per week, presumably including the customary BN kickback or 'commission'.

In an attempt to justify such lavish expenditure, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz a few months ago finally 'explained' to Parliament that “Apco Worldwide was hired to implement a comprehensive communications service in order to upgrade government communications capacity to be in line with best world practices”.

Expanding slightly on this vague and sketchy statement, he added that Apco also provides “support to the government in international media relations and strategic planning as well as research and analysis”, and training for government personnel in “various areas of strategic communications to upgrade their skill level”, including “basic skills like how to read and monitor media as well as how to build websites on the Internet”.

Not a word from Nazri, however, on specifically why Apco was selected, given that there are countless international consultancies capable of carrying out such tasks, and surely not all of them are owned and managed by citizens of a country of whose existence Malaysia denies, like Israel.

And of course there's no word currently on how Apco, originally hired to aid and abet the BN's miscommunications, has come to be employed as a weapon against the people's opposition in Parliament.

Performing puppets

Far be it from me to presume to recount the pernicious proceedings in which a letter from Apco was used to deny Anwar due process and the opportunity to produce documentary evidence on his behalf, as Kim Quek has covered the whole matter magnificently in his article, 'Democracy butchered in Malaysian Parliament'.

But I must say that even by BN standards, this latest effort by the government to turn Parliament into a House of ill-repute has been absolutely extraordinary.

And whether it was Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak or his confederates in Apco pulling the strings, all the usual puppets performed their appointed roles to an absolute fault.

Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia pandered as pathetically as ever to his BN proprietors, as usual denying the opposition their right to speak, and conspiring with BN members of the rights and privileges committee to deprive Anwar his legal right to submit his defence, before calling for a vote on the expulsion motion without debate.

BN's self-styled boy wonder, Umno Youth leader Khairy Jamaluddin compounded this series of atrocities with the blatantly lying declaration that: “Anwar had been given a fair process to defend himself. We in the BN had been prepared to debate the motion on his suspension.”

And in his role as de facto law minister, or given his frequent difficulty with the facts, let's make that de ficto law minister, Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz embarked on a ridiculous attempt to turn the BN aggressors into aggrieved victims.

Responding to Karpal Singh's amply-justified accusation that BN had used the “brute force of the majority” in these disgraceful expulsion proceedings, he counter-accused the opposition of practising the “tyranny of the minority”.

Nazri was quoted in Malaysiakini as raving that “knowing that BN is always cautious and may be blamed for victimising them if we use our so-called majority, they will say anything in (the) House...

“They will lie and insult the speaker - this is the tyranny of the minority because they think we are scared to take action (and be perceived as a) brute majority.

“They know we are scared and they do anything (they) want. They think they are immune - that's why they are taking advantage ... they are like tyrants in there and they (think) no one is brave enough to stop them.”

I don't know about you, but my first thoughts on reading this diatribe was that I'd never heard such a load of nit-witted nonsense, even from the notorious Nazri.

But on second thoughts, some of it had the ring of truth.

That “they know we are scared” bit, for example. The BN regime certainly has the growing rage of the Malaysian people to be scared of.

But I fancy Nazri had much more in mind than that - like some secrets that the US, Israel and others are party to concerning certain dodgy arms deals and the related Altantuya Shaariibuu murder, for example.

A thought that leads inevitably to the suspicion that the 1Malaysia/ 1MalApco connection may well be part of a deal that's not so much about communicating the BN regime's message as about keeping its worst crimes quiet.


DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini, following earlier collections 'Mad about Malaysia' and 'Even Madder about Malaysia'.

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