Lee Kuan Yew sued by Tengku Zainal

Ex-soldier sues LKY, Malaysian government for fraud, conspiracy.themalaysianinsider.com.The Malaysian Insider – Fri, Jan 20, 2012

By Melissa Chi

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 — A retired soldier claimed today that Malaysian soldiers had been discriminated against and cheated out of their rightful salaries since 1963, naming in a suit filed today former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and three Malaysian prime ministers among others as being responsible.
Tengku Zainal Abidin Tengku Yusoff, 58, claimed the armed forces were discriminated against because they were the only service excluded when a royal commission was set up in February 1964 to review civil service pay.
The commission was set up following the formation of Malaysia on September 16, 1963 to unify the public service of all states by way of pay and conditions of service review, including the Singapore Civil Service.
He also claimed that Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, the prime minister and defence minister in 1971, had “fraudulently” presented the armed forces pay scheme as a British Expatriate Pay Scheme, resulting in a drastic cut in the salaries of officers.
Tengku Zainal Abidin, who was a logistics staff officer, told The Malaysian Insider that although many of the affected officers had lost hope, and the funds for this class-action suit “ were not encouraging”, he was “very confident” that he would win the case.
He filed the case today, his third attempt, after the case was withdrawn for lack of evidence in 1995 and in 2001, when it was struck out because the case was time-barred.
This is the first time he is naming Lee, who was Singapore chief minister from 1963 until 1965, as a defendant.
“All this started in 1963 and Lee Kuan Yew could have stopped all this from continuing,” he said.
He said at the time the Singapore Armed Forces were merged with their Malaysian counterpart, and Lee should have been “vigilant of any effort to abuse the existence” of these armed forces.
Zainal Abidin said he is suing each of the defendants for RM3 million.
Other than Lee, every Malaysian prime minister since Razak, every chief secretary, every defence minister, every secretary-general of the Defence Ministry since 1963 as well as the Malaysian and the Singaporean governments were named defendants in this case.
He said he had received 230 signatures from the affected officers for consent to take up this civil action case.