PETALING JAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (pix) has dismissed claims that he had taken contradictory stands over cases of sexual improprieties in his two tenures as Prime Minister.
In a post on his personal blog Chedet he said he had been accused of “contradicting my own stand” in his response to a case involving a member of his own Cabinet in 1998 with his treatment of the on-going sex video implicating a member of his current Cabinet.
Unlike the on-going case, he pointed out that the action taken in 1998 was not based on a video clip.
“The court had already made its decision. The subsequent videos did not influence the court or anyone else,” he added. “It did not influence me.”
On Sept 2, 1998, then deputy prime minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was fired from the Cabinet, allegedly for committing sodomy.
He was arrested just over two weeks later under the Internal Security Act but was subsequently charged with corruption for allegedly interfering with the police investigations of his wrongdoings.
In 1999, he was found guilty and jailed for six years for corruption and subsequently another nine years for sodomy.
In his post, Mahathir said the recent video, implicating Economic Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali, was “obviously an attempt to blacken the name of the particular person in order to blight his future”.
He said if he were to take action expected of him (removing Azmin from the Cabinet), it would make him an accessory to the plot.
“I have no intention of becoming the instrument of the plotters. I will not be part of such dirty politics,” he added.
The video, that surfaced on social media last month, depicted two men in a compromising position in bed.
Former Santubong PKR youth leader Haziq Abdullah Abdul Aziz then confessed that he was one of the two men and that the other was Azmin.
Azmin, the deputy president of PKR, has consistently denied being involved in the making and distribution of the video.
