October 13, 2010
Ibrahim: I still have awards from other states.
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 — Datuk Ibrahim Ali brushed off the Kelantan Sultan’s order to strip him of his datukship today, coyly insisting that “you can still call me datuk”.
This, explained the pint-sized Perkasa chief when accosted by reporters in Parliament this morning, was because he still had two more datukship awards from Selangor and Malacca.
“Can, you can still call me datuk. I still have awards from other states,” the jovial-sounding Ibrahim said.
He however offered to be called “Saudara Ibrahim Ali”, noting that he did not mind being labelled such and would not feel slighted in any way.
“If I don’t have a datukship, it’s OK, I prefer to be called Saudara Ibrahim Ali. You don’t call me datuk, it’s OK. It is a small matter to me,” he said.
The Pasir Mas MP explained that he had received the Datuk Paduka Mahkota Selangor award from the Selangor palace and the Darjah Mulia Seri Mahkota award from Malacca.
“There were other states too I could have received my datukship award from, only I never filled up the form. To me, it is not a big deal. Nowadays, even those who are not datuks, we still call them datuk,” he said.
The Sultan of Kelantan today stripped Perkasa chief Datuk Ibrahim Ali of his datukship with immediate effect.
Palace comptroller Datuk Abdul Halim Hamad told The Malaysian Insider that Sultan Muhammad V also revoked the former state secretary Datuk Wan Hashim Wan Daud’s title.
Wan Hashim had claimed to be the private secretary to Muhammad’s predecessor and father Sultan Ismail Petra during the recent palace crisis which eventually led to the proclamation of a new Sultan.
Ibrahim today also said that he was “not surprised” that his title had been revoked by the Kelantan Sultan, and suggested that it could have been due to the crisis.
“I do not know the reason, it was not explained to me but I think it could be because of the present situation in Kelantan,” he said.
He explained that just last Friday, he had paid a visit to the ailing for Sultan, Ismail Petra at the latter’s home.
“I visited the previous Sultan as a friend because he is sick and since his return from Singapore, for almost one year, this was the first time I visited him. And he is too close to me as a personal friend so that is why I visited him... he was asking for me. We conversed like normal and then suddenly today, my award was retracted,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment