No one is directly accusing Malaysia of doing that. But Prime Minister Najib Razak’s crisis-plagued government’s controversial utterances about the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crash investigation have left some here wondering.
Three days after Razak’s middle-of-the-night announcement that a wing flap that washed ashore in the southern Indian Ocean was definitely part of the missing plane, investigators from France, the U.S., Australia and other countries have not backed up his assertion.
Things got stranger after Razak’s transport minister said that Malaysian searchers found a window, seat cushions and other plane debris on the French island of Reunion and gave them to French investigators. But French officials told news agencies Friday they had not received the items.
“By making this declaration in the middle of the night, by not being on the same page as the French investigators and yet coming out with such emphatic statements, in the midst of this scandal that is not going to go away — the general feeling is, yeah, he’s trying to deflect attention from his troubles,” said Azmi Sharom, a columnist and University of Malaysia law professor. “And it has failed miserably.”
Amid the worst financial scandal in Malaysian history, the confusion surrounding the multinational flight investigation seemed, for some, to thicken the gloom enveloping this country, long a bulwark of stability and wealth in Southeast Asia.
“At the moment [the government] can do no right,” Sharom said. “The level of cynicism and mistrust toward them is so great that everything becomes a conspiracy.”
08/08/15 Shashank Bengali/Los Angeles Times
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Three days after Razak’s middle-of-the-night announcement that a wing flap that washed ashore in the southern Indian Ocean was definitely part of the missing plane, investigators from France, the U.S., Australia and other countries have not backed up his assertion.
Things got stranger after Razak’s transport minister said that Malaysian searchers found a window, seat cushions and other plane debris on the French island of Reunion and gave them to French investigators. But French officials told news agencies Friday they had not received the items.
“By making this declaration in the middle of the night, by not being on the same page as the French investigators and yet coming out with such emphatic statements, in the midst of this scandal that is not going to go away — the general feeling is, yeah, he’s trying to deflect attention from his troubles,” said Azmi Sharom, a columnist and University of Malaysia law professor. “And it has failed miserably.”
Amid the worst financial scandal in Malaysian history, the confusion surrounding the multinational flight investigation seemed, for some, to thicken the gloom enveloping this country, long a bulwark of stability and wealth in Southeast Asia.
“At the moment [the government] can do no right,” Sharom said. “The level of cynicism and mistrust toward them is so great that everything becomes a conspiracy.”
08/08/15 Shashank Bengali/Los Angeles Times
