Fairus no loss to PKR

From: Politikus
Subject: Fairus no loss to PKR. Any gain to Umno?

UMNO just wants a story? ;-p
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Fairus no loss to PKR. Any gain to Umno?
Harakahdaily

PENANG, Mac 1: Umno is at it again. It is picking up the PKR’s
'rubbish' – and some even say paying through its nose for the unwanted
items.
On Sunday night, at a function in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Najib
Razak was at hand to personally roll out the red carpet for former
Penang deputy chief minister Fairus Khairuddin.

Fairus’s decision to leave PKR comes hot on the heels of Bayan Baru MP
Zahrain Mohd Hashim, who quit last week amid allegations that he had
tried to get Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to endorse a RM40
million golf management deal to a RM2 company, but failed.

Crossing over empty-handed

As for Fairus, he had surrendered the coveted DCM post in April 2009
amid a cloud of suspicion that he had accepted bribes from several
quarry companies. A month before that, he was detained at the Johor
customs checkpoint while on his way to Singapore and quizzed by the
Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

Fairus also had to relinquish his Penanti state seat, paving the way
for a by-election which was won by his PKR colleague Dr Mansor Othman.

Dr Mansor won by a stunning majority, taking 6,052 of the 7,100 votes
cast despite a poor voter turnout. He went on to replace Fairus as the
deputy chief minister and later also took over from Zahrain as the
Penang PKR chief.

“Of course, it will not affect PKR or Pakatan Rakyat. The stability of
the Penang government is also not in question at all. Fairus has
already given up all his official posts. Why did he suddenly choose to
join Umno is for him and Najib to disclose,” Mansor told Harakahdaily.

“All the information prior to him giving up the Penanti seat and the
DCM post has already been splashed out in the media. All the press
reports about the MACC closing in on him are there on record for
everyone to read and draw their own conclusions.”

Najib: It's a victory for Umno and the Malays

Fairus and Zahrain have now joined the league of recalcitrant PKR
members who have openly declared support for Umno.

Their most notorious predecessors are none other than Jamaluddin Radzi
of Behrang and Mohd Osman Jailu of Changkat Jering – two Perak
assemblymen who quit PKR amid corruption charges pressed by the MACC.

Unsurprisingly, the MACC has often been accused of being Umno’s tool
in forcing defections, openly using its powers to harass and charge
Pakatan politicians on its target and then retracting or freezing
those very same charges once it is politically convenient to do so.

Yet Najib – the Umno president – has tried to gloss over his party’s
penchant for taking in PKR’s dubious cast-offs by packaging Fairus’s
defection as a victory for his party and the Malay community.

“In the name of the Umno president, this young man named Fairus will
be accepted with an open heart because I know he made the decision as
a matter of principle, for the struggle - to be an Umno member,” Najib
boasted in his welcoming speech.

“So we have to take care of him, he can play a role for the party,
race and religion.”