Cloak and Dagger, 3 Stooges in Washington

I can't move to another issue until I have written this. People are saying this is a circus. Some are saying we fucked up. Some are saying we sent 3 stooges. Some judged it to be failure in PR on the part of the government. If these are true, why should the seminar be a cause of worry as its failure would precipitate the downfall of the BN government? All those pro Anwar bloggers should be clapping their hands maybe hallelujah-ing or ululating.

Who is lying over this CSIS issue? Lim Kit Siang wasn't there physically. He relied on accounts. He relied on second hand information. In law that would be hearsay, no?

I have written how pro Anwar lobbyists were pressing to have the seminar canceled. That didn't materialize. They then flew one blogger who serves as RPK's eyes and ears. They wanted to turn the event into a mauling session. They planned to ask tough and grueling questions at Nazri.

Who wasn't at the seminar? Only the AG. Unfortunately he couldn't make it because he was meeting with the US undersecretary of Commerce and other officials at that time. The time allotted to him clashed with the time the AG was slotted to speak at the seminar.

Who were there?

The chief justice, Tun Hamid Mohamad who is head of the MACC advisory panel was there. The head of MACC, Dato Abu Kassim was there. Kassim spoke and answered a number of questions. The Chief Justice was also able to answer questions until time ran out. He stayed behind.

But of course the pro Anwar agitators did not stay the full course. Had they stayed behind, they would be able to ask Tun Hamid directly on his ruling on Anwar earlier. They could have asked questions that can be calculated to embarrass the Malaysian government. The chief justice was there but was not questioned.  The seminar ended earlier only in the sense of a time imagined by the pro Anwar agitators. Why didn't they stay the full course even beyond the time stipulated? Answer: they didn't want to listen to explanation other than using bits and pieces to reaffirm their prejudices.

Who is CSIS? Are they a group of lobbyists or in Malaysianspeake- brokers? The sponsor of the event, CSIS, is a highly-respected academic institution founded in 1962, which has grown to become one of the world's best known international policy institutions, with more than 220 full-time staff and a large network of affiliated scholars focused on defense and security, regional stability, and transnational challenges. CSIS conferences cover issues from energy and climate to global development and economic integration. CSIS has a program on Southeast Asia that includes a focus on Malaysia. 

CSIS doesn't lobby. Never has, never will. It regularly has contacts with the opposition, including Anwar, and with officials in the government of Malaysia. As it should. Which was one reason the head of the program, Ernest Bower, was so dismayed when he found that the opposition was trying to activate its expensive DC network to shut the event done, rather than allow anyone from the government to be heard at a Washington think-tank in an event open to the public.

Seminar Was Always Under Chatham House Rules.

What the hell is this?

Was it a "cloak and dagger" session? This claim is preposterous. The normal and accepted practice is that conferences are held under Chatham House rule. (Note: singularity of the term. Rule not rules). There is only one rule and that is:

The Chatham House Rule is a rule that governs the confidentiality of the source of information received at a meeting. Since its refinement in 2002, the rule states

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. The rule originated in June, 1927, at what is now best known as Chatham House with the aim of guaranteeing anonymity to those speaking within its walls in order that better international relations could be achieved. It is now used throughout the world as an aid to free discussion.

Now hear this about the on and off the record. Meetings, or parts of meetings, may be held either "on the record" or "under the Chatham House Rule". In the latter case, the participants are understood to have agreed that it would be conducive to free discussion that they should be subject to the rule for the relevant part of the meeting. The Rule allows people to speak as individuals, and to express views that may not be those of their organizations, and therefore it encourages free discussion. Speakers are then free to voice their own opinions, without concern for their personal reputation or their official duties and affiliations.

So in the case of the seminar by CSIS in Washington, it was understood that attributions would not be made to individual participants, so that all participants could express their views freely, without having to worry about having their statements misquoted, distorted, or otherwise abused. This is a normal practice at CSIS, the Brookings Institute, and most other think tanks in Washington when the participants in a conference want to be unusually open and free.

Ask a Washington policy-maker how often he or she has attended conferences under Chatham House rules.  If they haven't, then they haven't been to many conferences.  Lim Kit Siang doesn't know this, or perhaps he just doesn't care about the truth. He wants to label it cloak and dagger. The truth is easy to obtain. A copy of the original invitation from February 19 remains online at CSIS website. It states clearly the conference is open to the public, but its statements not for quotation.

What did Nazri say? I never thought I will ever want to reproduce or comment on what Nazri say one day. He made 2 important points. The first was that having Anwar tried is not convenient or good for the government, and wasn't something anyone wanted, but happened because a young man came to the police alleging that he was sexually coerced by Anwar, and as a result a process was set into motion because the legal system must protect the accuser as well as the accused.  The second was that it is not proper for public officials to have any role in any criminal trial, whose outcome must be determined by an unbiased judge on the basis of the facts and the law.

What's clearly happening is that some people will do anything to try to get international pressure put on Malaysia to influence our country's judicial system from outside. No matter what the facts may be. It does make one wonder about what the facts will ultimately show in the ongoing trial.