THE REMOVAL OF DS ROSMAH,WE MALAYSIANS MUST ALWAYS SEEK THE TRUTH... ~ ! BUJANG SENANG !

19 Sep 2016

THE REMOVAL OF DS ROSMAH,WE MALAYSIANS MUST ALWAYS SEEK THE TRUTH...

5:41 PTG No comments

Last week office of the Director-General of UNESCO via its Liaison Office in Geneva released a press release which detailed the D-G Irina Bokova's schedule as she visited the New York City for the annually held United Nations General Assembly. [http://www.unesco.org/…/unesco_contributing_to_71st_un_ge…/…]

Among the event that she's been scheduled to attend is the event called “A Tribute to heroes in the global campaign against violent extremism”, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On this event PM's wife, Datin Paduka Seri Rosmah Mansor was supposed to receive "The Lead by Example" Award alongside President Macky Mall of Senegal as reported by several local media.

Today Malaysiakini and The New York Times reported that DS Rosmah Mansor name has been removed from the list and she won't receive the award. I've made a screen capture of the news from MKini and NYT, read the attached pictures to this post.

DS Rosmah was support to get the award due to her contribution towards early childhood education and many successful programs under Program PERMATA which was also her brainchild.

Apparently as reported by MKini:
"Parfitt said following inaccurate leaks of the committee’s recommendations, the organisation had been quizzed by the media about the sources of funding for Permata.

He said as academics, the organisation had no immediate means of verifying funding for Permata, and was not aware of any specific wrongdoing."

and NYTimes:
"The statement said that questions had been raised about the sources of Permata’s funding, and that although the event organizers were not aware of any specific wrongdoing, they did not have time to vet the organization."

the committee removed DS Rosmah name as one of the honorees because they could not verify the sources of PERMATA funding.

The media are implying that PERMATA source of funding came from illegitimate source when PERMATA actually gets its fund from the government under PM's Department. In a publicly available publication like Penyata Kewangan Kerajaan Persekutuan/Federal Government Financial Statements we can find the details of PERMATA's operating budget.

These are funds allocated to PERMATA annually since 2013:
2013: RM20.59 million
2014: RM32.39 million
2015: RM34.46 million
2016(e): RM36.34 million
[refer pictures below]

These funds allocated from government annual budgets were used for staff salary, services and supply, asset purchases or in other words to fund PERMATA's operation.

It's wrong to say that sources of fund for PERMATA cannot be verified when we can easily access government documents on its expenditure and details of it spending items.

While it's the award committee's right to name or remove any name on their honorees list, it's not right for the media to imply or to potray that DS Rosmah's PERMATA sources of funding were not verified or came from illegitimate or unknown sources.

Some media like to paint the negative image on DS Rosmah by implicating her to 1MDB shenanigans, highlighting the US Justice Department civil suit and so on but make no mistake, in no way she was named or implicated in the civil suit brought by the DOJ. Even the allegation that she's used fund from 1MDB for personal purposes hasn't been proven by the famous The Wall Street Journal, except some "nice" infographics made by themselves.

The baseless and relentless attack on DS Rosmah and PERMATA by certain quarters is uncalled for. PERMATA program has brought many benefits to children, teenagers and bright students in Malaysia and it's recognized internationally. The program itself was modelled after studies and observations made in the early child education in developed countries such as France, USA, Australia and New Zealand.

The removal of DS Rosmah from the "Lead by Example" award is considered a victory to some people. They never actually care about the PERMATA program, they don't even care about the truth. But we the Malaysians, must and should always seek the truth.