Khairy asks about Mahathir’s nepotism

Finally the gloves are off. It has been one-way traffic all this while. All the personal attacks from former PM Dr Mahathir found no response from either the present leader Abdullah Ahmad Badawi or his family.

Abdullah has been very calm about the whole issue, saying that it was within Dr Mahathir’s rights to speak out. And the old man spoke out, he did. He questioned the power and influence of Abdullah’s son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin in formulating government policies.

He spoke at length about how Khairy has amassed vast amount of wealth in a short period. And more damagingly he alluded that Abdullah had had a hand in helping his son and son-in-law in becoming rich.

At one point, the sharpest attack was when Mahathir pondered out loudly if Abdullah was the prime minister of the country or his family, seemingly over the various government projects granted to the family members.

The only noise of discomfort came from the cabinet ministers, but their comments and admonition of Mahathir were confined to criticism on the government policies.

So after enduring weeks of public haranguing, finally the Abdullah camp has decided to stand up and defend their corner.

The first punch came from Khairy himself. Although he did not name Mahathir in his speech to party members, he nevertheless asked all “party members” to check their facts first before leveling accusations against him.

He said the attacks against him were baseless and mere lies and that he was a sitting duck to those who want to actually attack Abdullah. He said:

“Those who cannot attack Pak Lah (Prime Minister Abdullah) attack him through me, as his son-in-law.”

And he did not stop there. Again without mentioning Mahathir in his speech, Khairy asked as to who actually owned Alliance Bank and Pantai Holdings Bhd before they were both sold to Singaporean interests.

For those in the dark, the answer is Mahathir’s sons, who were also involved in various business ventures and at times needed to be bailed out using government funds.

Good point I think. I now wait for Dr M’s response to this. More interestingly I await Abdullah’s comments on Khairy’s remarks. Will he has something or would he just allow his son-in-law to do all the attacks?

However there is something which I don’t agree with Khairy. In his speech, he also defended the government’s (actually his father-in-law’s) decisions to scrap the causeway bridge project and the sale of MV Augusta by Proton Holdings for a nominal amount.

Mahathir had raised issues on both these matters but I don’t think it is wise for Khairy to defend the government on these. After all he has no government post and the more he defends the government position, the more likely it looks that he did have some influence in these matters. What you think?