We investigate the photo of Najib’s “second family” and found a deeper mystery

If you’ve been on Twitter yesterday, you might have noticed that ‘Rosmah’ was trending. Yes, that Rosmah. Funnily enough, what went viral wasn’t quite Rosmah, but a picture of her husband with ANOTHER woman clinging on to his thick, macho arm, with what’s presumably their children crowding around them:

Bahagi kek ke tu? pic.twitter.com/UFTgPS6FUv

— Adam is King. King ialah Rakyat (@amofficialmy) May 18, 2022

In case you haven’t gasped in horror and said “HE. DID. NOT.” yet, the widely alleged implication here is that Najib had been living a double life with a second wife, one that the public – and most probably Rosmah – knew nothing about. How absolutely juicy! How worthy of page 6 in the most esteemed of tabloids! It’s a scandal for the ages!

We initially meant that sarcastically, because after all, it’s not uncommon for political people to go great lengths to make rumors about each other. However, after trying some fact-checking and following the chatter… we’re not so sure.

 

At first we thought it’s Photoshop, but something didn’t check out

Our disbelief is so strong at first that we thought it’s just another cheap Photoshop. For example, looking closely at the lady’s picture, it seems that the upper left side of her head is strangely angular, which is what might happen when you get lazy with the pen tool in Photoshop and literally cut corners. Just to be sure we’re not seeing things, we asked a photographer outside of Cilisos (who will remain anonymous) to see if anything’s strange with the photo, and she pointed out suspicious parts like the blurring behind the woman’s head and the inconsistencies in clarity/focus throughout the image, suggesting some shoddy liquifying.

“I like how they didn’t Photoshop Najib’s belly la LMAO.” – anonymous photographer.

So we were pretty convinced, until later when we realized one vital issue: all of the Photoshopping ‘evidence’ we found happened on the woman. In a family picture like this one, wouldn’t it make more sense to Photoshop Najib’s head in instead of messing with all the other people? The more we thought about it, the weaker our earlier evidences seem: her head may seem angular because of the way she’s pinned. The blurring in the backdrop might be a design choice. And it’s a pretty low quality image from Twitter, so there’s bound to be blurring in some parts.

Trying to find the original, unPhotoshopped image had been fruitless: all instances of the image on reverse Google image search happened within the past two days, and TinEye has no results. With that, the theory of the image being Photoshopped seems unlikely.

Still, it should be noted that…

 

Najib had been accused of marrying multiple other women in the past

After digging around a bit, it seems that this isn’t the first time Najib has been alleged to have a wife other than Rosmah. To be fair, Rosmah is Najib’s second legit marriage, the first one being to Tengku Puteri Zainah Tengku Eskandar from 1976 to 1987. He had been married to Rosmah Mansor since, but in 2020 rumors had circulated of Najib’s new wives, with one sensational site claiming Najib’s secret wives number six in total. Wahh.

One of the alleged secret wives, Noorhaiza Abdullah, had came out and denied they were married, and had since made a police report regarding the rumors. Another piece of the rumor claimed that one of the women was a former air-stewardess, and that they married quietly in one of Najib’s brother’s house. While at the time Jamal Yunos, then Sungai Besar’s UMNO Chief, had dismissed this as another ploy of the Red Bean Army (nickname given to alleged DAP cybertroopers), Najib himself had reportedly neither confirmed or denied the rumors back then.

Fast forward to the present, with the recent picture that went viral, people had been talking about it again, and some have claimed to identify the woman in the picture: Hashimah Ramli, the ex-wife of composer Fauzi Marzuki, who divorced her back in 2013. According to Twitter user @Salim_Iskandar, the woman, also known as Shimah, used to be an air stewardess. The other people in the pic are allegedly her three children from the previous marriage, plus a son-in-law.

Supposedly, Shimah was introduced to Najib by her brother, who used to be the CEO of the Malaysian Tourism Exchange (MATEX) sometime between 2006-2008, when Ku Nan was Minister of Tourism. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find much about this so-called MATEX, but perhaps interestingly, Shimah, who reportedly also went by Zara Shima, was also one of the women implicated in the 2020 mass marrying rumor.

Sempat juga bossku kahwin lain dalam sibuk2 naik turun mahkamah 😂😂😂.
Bukan 2..bukan 3…bukan 4…banyak tuuu 😂

Zara Shima, Sis Noor Haiza Abdullah pun kena jugak 😄#RbaTakDakIdea pic.twitter.com/lsDCw23XpA

— Halim Osman (@HalimOsman11) March 14, 2020

According to a viral FB post by someone who claimed that their kids go to the same school, Shimah’s social media accounts had been closed since the picture went viral. The person had also recounted an anecdote of Najib’s pilot (probably driver?) asking him about the marriage, which is weird since the pilot should know as he’s with Najib almost 24/7. This implies that the pilot either really don’t know about it, or is doing some damage control by feigning ignorance.

 

So does Najib has a secret family, or not?! We need answers!

Honestly? We can’t tell. As of the time of writing, Najib himself had not made any statements about the matter. His supporters on social media also seemed pretty nonchalant about the rumors, with some pointing out that as far as rumors go, it’s not as bad as, say, sleeping with another man or committing adultery: if they’re married legally, then there’s not much issue to stir up in the first place. And that kind of ties into the issue of motive: right now, it seems that the only one who could potentially be hurt by these rumors is Rosmah, so it’s weird why anybody would make the effort to stir up these rumors in the first place.

Anyways, until an official statement comes out, these are all just speculations, so we’ll be treating this as yet another rumor. But if it is indeed true that Najib did marry in secret without Rosmah’s knowledge, then the spat of marriage rumors in 2020 might be a master move to hide his real secret marriage, as pointed out by one of the comments. To hide a tree, use a forest, as the old saying goes.

Until next time… XOXO, Gossip Sos.