You’re reading a paid version of The Malaysianist, a newsletter on money and power by writer and journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa.
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Every now and then a bunch of old men with some links to journalism surface to stake their claim as national heroes or purveyors of truth by indulging in petty arguments.
That was the crux of a so-called rebuttal written by The Edge founder Tong Kooi Ong against his former editor-in-chief Leslie Lopez.
In his book, The Siege Within, Lopez wrote about the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal, among other things, and alleged that it was a political conspiracy to bring down then PM Najib Razak, with Tong purportedly playing a part.
Political conspiracy claims are huge triggers for tycoon Tong who has time and again defended himself and The Edge over such allegations, especially over their 1MDB exposes.
Tong, too, recently published a book together with some of his colleagues on what happened behind the scenes during their coverage of the scandal and other issues called Behind the Stories – The Making of The Edge.
I’m not sure if this is a skirmish between two fogeys wanting to bump up sales for each other’s books, but I had the fortune (or misfortune) of friends forwarding me pdf copies of Tong’s rebuttal in the latest The Edge weekly.
I have not read both books. The past few weeks, however, have been interesting in that we’ve seen some people either trying to write something contentious about the 1MDB scandal (re: Lopez) or trying to remind readers and viewers of their contributions (re: Tong and his friend, Nazir Razak).
I have no tea to spill. But I have some things to say and I’ll split them into two parts.
Part 1 covers my time with a news portal called The Malaysian Insider (TMI), which Tong acquired at some point in time, only to shut it down in 2016.
TMI was a fly on the wall. An odd creature. I worked at the portal from 2013 right till the last day when a whole bunch of us were retrenched.
And, till today, there are some wild claims, strange insights and unanswered questions. But no heroes.