Malaysia: Prime Minister's daughter resigns, on suspicion of nepotism
Current Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim with his eldest daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar on January 9, 2012 in Kuala Lumpur.
AFP - SAEED KHAN
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
Six weeks after being appointed economic adviser to the government, the eldest daughter of new Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Nurul Izzah Anwar, is stepping down.
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At first, Anwar Ibrahim didn't want to hear anything.
“
Nepotism,
he said
, is giving power to your loved ones so that they abuse it, get rich, win contracts and earn huge sums.
This is not the case for my daughter who works on a voluntary basis
”.
But this discourse did not last long.
We had to back down when the NGO Transparency International entered the dance, castigating a bad signal, which would send Malaysia plummeting in the international rankings.
Even the Prime Minister's own allies have pointed to the inexperience of his daughter Nurul Izzah Anwar, admittedly an engineering school graduate, but who has never dealt with economics or finance.
680 million dollars embezzled
Too sensitive, in a country still traumatized by
the 1MDB scandal
, one of the biggest embezzlements in modern history: 680 million dollars of Malaysian public money transferred to the personal accounts of a
former head of government
.
Anwar Ibrahim, who has campaigned for 25 years with an anti-corruption program, prefers to nip the controversy in the bud.
But his daughter remains in the institutional landscape.
She will co-chair the economic council of the Ministry of Finance.
And remains vice-president of the political party created by her father.
► To read also:
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the opposition appointed Prime Minister in Malaysia
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Malaysia
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