Squatgate Inquiry – It Gets Curiouser and Curiouser.

Many people feel the authorities do not seem to know their left hand from their right hand especially with so many ministers and deputy ministers very capable of doing their own thing and then having to make a woeful apology.

But let us not be too hasty to blame the leadership – they are not greenhorns and sometimes everyone gets fooled as the politicians have control of so many resources like the media, the Elections Commission and law enforcement.

Just take the squatgate incident. Apparently the video clip was known to be in existence sometime in June 2005 but nothing was done until it became public information in November. Together with the reported abuse of a few Chinese nationals, a scenario was created that Malaysia was profiling Chinese women, as 50,000 Chinese tourists could not be accounted for.

Not to mention the millions of such unaccounted visitors of all nationalities but that is another story.

Now we know that the victim is Malay and not Chinese as expected on account of her fair skin. We seem to forget that many Chinese have married Malays and surely some of the offspring will have fair skin and Chinese features. Malays have also adopted Chinese babies.

Of course the race of the victim is irrelevant when an abuse has taken place except that the recording became public knowledge just before the Kelantan by-elections.

It is being alleged that the government suppressed the information about the victim so that the BN could win the by-elections. Looking at the slim majority by which they won, this looks like a plausible reason.

So it seems that to win the by-elections, the government has withheld information and also spent millions to eat humble pie in China. Instead of clarifying the matter earlier, the local media was allowed to speculate about the “China girl” thereby causing a major blow to the tourism industry all for the sake of winning a by-election.

It appears the authorities feel that they can still “fool all the people all the time”.