From The Star today:
Umno Youth wants Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to respond to reports that he had a hand in getting a highly paid job for Shaha Riza, the girlfriend of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, outside the organisation.This following NST's similar claim earlier in their article titled "The Wolfowitz connection: Anwar Ibrahim's hand in Shaha Riza's transfer". For those who have been following the Wolfowitz controversy, the former World Bank president was found by the World Bank panel to have violated the bank's rules in granting his girlfriend Shaha Riza a pay rise. He resigned over the issue, not before creating a bitter row in defending his actions as above board. And just when we thought we would not hear of this any more, Anwar's name somehow was dragged into it, thus extending in Malaysia what would have been a closed case.
Anwar, who is the chairman of the Foundation for the Future, is alleged to have written a letter to Robin Cleveland, Wolfowitz’s counsellor at the World Bank, requesting for Riza to be transferred to the foundation.
It turns out that the pay rise that Shaha Riza obtained was also in conjunction of her transfer to the Foundation for the Future in which Anwar is chairman. Anwar was stated in the NST article as having written a letter to Robin Cleveland, Wolfowitz's counsellor, asking for her transfer from the State Department to the foundation. Anwar's close association with Wolfowitz has always been a talking point in Malaysian conversations about politics. Very likely the attempt to link Anwar to Wolfowitz's fall from grace in the World Bank is but one of the many attempts to paint him in as bad a light as possible, never mind the fact that the ruling party has time and again claimed he is no longer a factor in Malaysian politics, and he is nothing but a spent force not worthy of media space. But the manner in which he is attacked and his ceramahs being disrupted or blocked consistently makes a mockery of those claims. Khairy's demand that Anwar explain his role in the controversy is the latest in a string of such examples.
It could very well turned out to be nothing but blowing hot air. Anwar has come out with a refutation, to the effect that Shaha Riza was assigned by the World Bank to the foundation before he was even made chairman (2005). The letter was written because the executive committee of the foundation decided in 2006 to regularize her appointment as to avoid conflict of interest due to the fact that all the while she was appointed through the US State Department. By regularizing her appointment she would be assigned directly from the World Bank instead. Of course, this doesn't mean her pay rise engineered by Wolfowitz due to this re-appointment is above board. In fact, her pay rise started in 2005 itself when she was in the State Department while still on the World Bank's payroll. The request from the foundation in 2006 to have her assigned directly from the World Bank does not seem to be inappropriate, nor could I see how it could be linked to her allegedly inappropriate pay rise which happened earlier.
To read more on Anwar's statement regarding the attempt to link him to Wolfowitz's fall, check out this article by Malaysiakini. In it he also deals with Umno Youth's demand that he explain himself for helming a foundation funded by the United States. I'm not too sure what exactly is the problem with that, unless they're trying to bolster their claims that Anwar is a paid CIA stooge. That is, if they could decide once and for all what to tar him as.
2 comments:
thanks for this boss..
just wanted to mention though, that DS Anwar came out with this statement over the weekend, well before Khairy's antics in The Star.
The full statement is also available here
Nice to see some more critical views and perspectives on this matter.
The documents released by the World Bank clarify the point which the Malaysian media has opted to obfuscate and confuse. Journalists and bloggers masquerading as journalists ought to check their facts before publishing and when they publish erroneous information they should recant and issue clarifications and apologies.
The World Bank Ethics Committee documents show
1. An attempt was made by the Bank, PW, and SR to follow due process in resolving the conflict of interest at the Bank. Whether they succeeded in that attempt is the crux of the matter and is addressed in the more recent statement by the Bank and PW.
2. That Riza's raise and external assignment to the State Department were the result of deliberations that took place within the World Bank during the Summer of 2005 and that were finalized in September 2005. Neither Anwar Ibrahim personally nor the Foundation for the Future as an organization (which did not even exist at that point) had anything to do with either her raise or external assignment to the State Department.
3. That the Foundation for the Future did nothing inappropriate. The Foundation did not exist in September 2005. It was an idea that existed on paper and could not have been party to any negotiations of any sort. Once the Foundation was a real institution it was in a position to hire staff and to formally assign Riza to the Foundation and dissolve her association with the State Department which was clearly no longer necessary. Anwar Ibrahim's October 2006 letter as Chairman of the Foundation to the Bank reaffirms SR's mandate to work to build and develop the Foundation (which was the focus of her assignment to the State Department as described in a September 2005 letter between the State Dept. and the World Bank). The letter makes no mention of SR's salary other than to refer to the existing arrangement that had already been made with the State Department.
Regards
-As
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