The wife of Malaysia’s next prime minister said it was her husband’s destiny to lead the country, despite opposition attempts to link him to corruption and murder.
In an interview on Friday, Rosmah Mansor said the attacks on her husband, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, have made the couple more mature and stronger.
“If we had not gone through this we would not have known what resilience is all about,” Rosmah said in her first interview with an international news agency.
Najib is scheduled to take over from Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi early next month.
“You must also believe in destiny. If it is meant to be for my husband to be [the prime minister] it is meant to be,” Rosmah said.
“Let’s not do anything unethical to stop it. It is his turn,” Rosmah said.
Opposition leaders and independent commentators writing on blogs have tried to link Najib and Rosmah to the killing of a Mongolian woman and accused him of corruption in government deals to buy French submarines and Russian jets. Najib has rejected the accusations.
Asked about the allegations linking them to the killing, Rosmah said she ignores such “mischievous statements from mischievous people.”
Rosmah, speaking in an annex of her sprawling official residence, indicated she was disappointed when Najib was overlooked for the prime minister’s post in 2003. At the time, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad appointed Abdullah to succeed him.
“When Mahathir chose Badawi we never went against it because we believed that ‘fine it is his time, it is his destiny’ and we went on with our lives,” Rosmah said.
“We respected the fact that he was chosen and we were not spiteful, we were not hostile, we were not undermining [Abdullah], we were not planning or plotting. Now it is my husband’s turn so I hope everybody will be able to accept that,” she said.
The opposition contends that Najib was involved in the slaying of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a 28-year-old Mongolian translator who was having an affair with a close friend of Najib.
Government lawyers say Shaariibuu was shot in October 2006. Her body was then blown up in a forest outside Kuala Lumpur, and only fragments were found.
Prosecutors alleged that Abdul Razak Baginda, Najib’s friend, ordered Shaariibuu killed after she started pestering him for money.
Abdul Razak was acquitted last October of abetting the slaying.
A court is scheduled to decide next month whether to convict two police officers charged with carrying out the killing.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home