Barisan Nasional (BN) parliamentary candidate for the Sungai Petani seat Datuk Shahanim Mohd Yusof has defended her action of distributing packets believed to contain cash at a residential area in Sungai Petani.
Shahanim said what she did was not wrong as it was done in her capacity as a senator and to help the under-privileged community in the area.
“I don’t think it was wrong, it’s not even nomination day. I was only helping the Indian community there by using my allocation as senator to help the people in Sungai Petani,” she told reporters when approached at Seri Mentaloon today.
Shahanim slammed the opposition for trying to tarnish her name by circulating a video on the incident.
“This is why the Anti-Fake News law was approved, to counter all kinds of fake news like this,” she said.
Shahanim said she would lodge a police report on the matter to clear her name.
Recently, a viral video on social media showed Shahanim distributing packets believed to contain cash to the Indian community at a function in Sungai Petani.
The video also showed the former Kedah Puteri chief asking the attendees to vote for BN during GE14, as it is the only coalition that can help people in the area.
This disgraceful woman ought certainly take herself to the police station, not to ‘lodge a police report to clear her name’, but to turn herself in.
She has not denied she was out there bribing voters with packets of cash. How could she, since it is there on video? Anyway, the woman is a brazen repeat offender in this respect – remember her handing out cash to those people on the bus?
The only question remains is how much was in those packets?
The candidate, who might perhaps have tried to plead gross ignorance of the world and finance, had she not come from a career in banking, claims this money came from her ‘allocation to help consituents’, which she just happened to have decided to have handed out at an election rally, where she thundered to her listeners that they ought vote her back into office.
In which case, as a banker, she will naturally have kept records of the receipt of the allocation of public money, its translation into cash, the amount, the policy decision to distribute it in this fashion, how much to whom and so forth. She must publish this immediately.
How telling that, instead of providing the necessary details to explain why voters were being handed cash at the same time as being told to vote for her and to identify the money with BN, this woman has resorted to the new and internationally condemned ‘Fake News’ law, sped through by Najib, to threaten those, who merely displayed her actions on social media.
So, which bit was fake Shahanim? What we all saw and heard with our own eyes and ears, which was vote buying in action, or your hollow promises that you and your BN party are suddenly, after years of oppression and neglect, going to make these poor lives better?