The Anwars tell Najib how to be ‘cool’

Teoh El Sen | September 20, 2011

The opposition leader and his wife says that if the PM wants to be cool, he can start by putting in place the demands made by Bersih 2.0.

KUALA LUMPUR: Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and his wife, PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, have offered some pointers to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak on how to be “cool”.

The couple were responding to the premier’s latest public relations exercise which saw him attending concerts and hitting the airwaves of popular radio stations.

“You can mislead some people with some public relations exercise by APCO, you pay money they can portray you (a good image) but the end result is from your actions,” Anwar told reporters outside the Jalan Duta courts today.

Anwar said he was simply not interested whether Najib was, or thinks, he was cool.

“I’m not interested in personal nature of whether he is cool or not… now you talk about (repealing) the ISA(Internal Security Act) you must mean it, you must tell us what are the changes of two new laws to replace it. You talk about free media, what are you talking about? Look at the Malay papers and TV3 everyday,” he added.

At this point, PKR president and Anwar’s wife Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail interjected and said: “To be cool (Najib), please start with the electoral reforms that Bersih 2.0 asked for.”

Anwar agreed. “Yes, if you really want to be cool, that’s the way. You say you’re setting up a Parliamentary Select Committee to see to electoral reforms. Until today, I am the opposition leader, there has not been any news given to me?”

“What is stopping the Election Commission from taking action today itself? As we all know, perhaps its due to the Bangladesh prime minister,” he added, referring to a report in a Bangladeshi government website that the BN government gave Bangladeshi workers here citizenship in exchange for their votes.

The PKR leaders’ comments on Najib followed the criticisms of several MPs today, who claimed that the premier’s latest reforms and public relations blitz were “non-substantive”, “cosmetic in nature” and a result of intense public and opposition pressure.

Recently, Najib announced the much-awaited repeal of the ISA, which allowed for detention without trial, as well as the removal or review of several other draconian laws in the country; in what was seen as his preparations for upcoming 13th general election.

It was also reported that the prime minister had hired a team of notable strategists, including the experts behind Tony Blair’s “New Labour” and Paul Stadlen, the former boss of APCO Malaysia, to embark on a new publicity campaign to rebrand himself as “cool”.