Don’t link pilot’s political views to missing plane, say PKR leaders

Joseph Dass

 

" A bad Carpenter blames his tools " simply to say " A bad Governance takes on the innocent Citizens "

"Linking Anwar to everything is unique to Malaysian politics. But knowing Umno and BN, something that is imaginary can become reality if they run out of capital."

PKR has dismissed attempts to tie the party and the pilot's political beliefs to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, saying that such speculation was irresponsible and irrelevant.

Party leaders said there was no proof that the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah (pic), was behind the flight's mysterious disappearance.

PKR leaders Sivarasa Rasiah and Tian Chua also refuted reports that tried to paint Zaharie as a political fanatic.

Britain's Daily Mail reported that police were probing into the probability that Zaharie, described as a vocal PKR member, would have been profoundly upset by the court ruling on the party's de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The tabloid said Zaharie had been present at the Court of Appeal on March 7, a day before flight 370 went missing, when Anwar was found guilty of sodomy and sentenced to five years in jail.

Altough Zaharie is a member of the PKR's Subang division and regularly seen at its events, Sivarasa said this should not be a main factor in the search for the plane which has been missing for a week.

"We should not be focusing on his character at this point. The government should focus on finding the missing plane and what happened to it," said Tian Chua to reporters at the party's Kajang by election operations centre.

Separately, PKR secretary-general Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the Daily Mail possessed an "extraordinary imagination" in suggesting that Zaharie hijacked his own plane because he was disappointed with the Appeals Court's judgment in Anwar’s second sodomy case.

Saifuddin described the daily's report as a "political conspiracy theory that does not make sense" and blamed it on Barisan Nasional (BN).

He said Zaharie, 53, who has flown more than 18,300 hours since joining Malaysia Airlines (MAS) in 1981, was a life member of PKR.

He, however, dismissed the tabloid's suggestion that the man could have hijacked the plane when it involves hundreds of innocent human lives.

"Linking Anwar to everything is unique to Malaysian politics. But knowing Umno and BN, something that is imaginary can become reality if they run out of capital.

"The real issue here is the incompetence of the Malaysian government in handling this situation with the missing plane," he told The Malaysian Insider today.

Flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew onboard disappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. After nine days of search, the fate of the plane and its occupants remains unknown.

There are now speculations that Zaharie, who reportedly attended Anwar's trial on March 7, hijacked his own plane some eight hours later as a sign of protest.

Anwar was found guilty of sodomising a former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan in 2008 and was sentenced to five years’ jail, after the Appeals Court overturned the Kuala Lumpur High Court's decision to acquit him in January 2012.

The Daily Mail reported that investigators have told the tabloid that they were now looking for evidence to link Zaharie's political views to the disappearance of the plane.

The British tabloid earlier today also reported that Zaharie was an "obsessive supporter" of Anwar and added that police sources have confirmed the pilot of being a "vocal political activist" and fear that the court's decision to convict the opposition leader "have left him profoundly upset".

This was confirmed by Zaharie's colleagues, the Daily Mail reported.

Yesterday, police searched Zaharie's home in Shah Alam, where he had installed a home-made flight simulator after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced that MH370 was "deliberately" steered off course by someone on the plane after its communication system was switched off.

The tabloid also reported that police have examined two laptops that were removed from Zaharie's house earlier last week.

However, police failed to locate Zaharie's personal computer, which may be in the cockpit with him.
Zaharie was flying together with first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, who has more than 2,700 of flying hours, when the plane dropped off the radar before entering Vietnamese airspace last Saturday.

Fariq's behaviour was also questioned earlier last week when Australian media quoted a South African woman, who claimed that he allegedly let her and a friend into the cockpit of a plane flying from Thailand to Kuala Lumpur.

She claimed that they chatted and smoked in the cockpit – allegations that reportedly “shocked” MAS. – March 16, 2014.