The person who should be in the dock for exposing the country to the risks of a chain of economic disasters like the nosedive of the Malaysian ringgit to 1998 levels and a plunge in the country’s credit was instead on a road show to drum up public support.
“He wants to show that he was even more popular than Mahathir Mohamad, the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister,” said DAP elder statesman Lim Kit Siang in a reference to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
“This was why Malaysia was in such shambles as this is not the way to govern and lead the country to realize Vision 2020 and join the ranks of developed nations.”
Lim, who is also DAP Parliamentary Leader and the Gelang Patah MP, was commenting on the government finally admitting that the Prime Minister was the final approving authority for 1MDB transactions.
Hence, he wonders whether Cabinet meetings in March and May on 1MDB chaired by Najib were valid, proper and legal because of conflict of interest issues.
Lim wants to know when the Cabinet was first informed that the Prime Minister was in fact the final approving authority for all the controversial and opaque 1MDB deals, transactions and investments. “I have a strong suspicion the Cabinet Ministers did not know about Najib’s final approving authority role until the past few days,” he said.
On March 4, pointed out Lim, the Cabinet declared the 1MDB deals as above board and on May 29 it apparently approved the 1MDB Roadmap after it was presented by Second Finance Minister Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah.
“It was now very clear that when the Ministers approved the 1MDB Roadmap at the Cabinet meeting last Friday, the overwhelming majority did not understand the issues involved,” he said. “They gave ‘blind’ support for the Roadmap, especially after Najib had asked Ministers who did not agree with it to hand in their resignations.”
Under such circumstances, he reiterated, it was no surprise that even the Ministers who did not understand how Najib was handling the 1MDB issues gave their full support for the Roadmap.
It is clear that the 35 Ministers, said Lim, can be divided into three groups on the 1MDB issue:
Firstly, the handful who understand the 1MDB scandal, including its impropriety especially with regard to the lack of accountability and transparency but are prepared to overlook them because of loyalty to Najib and to their ministerial posts;
Secondly, the handful who believe that 1MDB was a disastrous scandal and can lead to the downfall of the Umno/BN government, and want the entire 1MDB Board to be sacked; and
Thirdly, the majority of the Cabinet Ministers who do not want to understand or know what was happening in the 1MDB scandal so long as they keep their ministerial positions.
For the past six years, noted Lim, Najib acted as if he was quite in the dark about 1MDB’s operations, claiming that he was not involved in the day-to-day running of the company as he was only Chairman of the Advisory Board.
“Najib owes the country and people an explanation on why he had put up a charade in the past six years on 1MDB,” said Lim. “In fact he had been intimately involved as the final approving authority in the 1MDB deals, transactions and investments.”
“Parliament as well has been kept in the dark about Najib’s pre-eminent role in 1MDB for the past six years.”
Cabinet Ministers had a secret three-hour briefing on the 1MDB on Tuesday night at the Hotel Majestic, Kuala Lumpur. Apparently, the “cart before the horse” briefing was so secretive that Husni, who had the job of providing explanations, denied when met that the meeting was about 1MDB.
FMT