The Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia is reported to have told Parliament that the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB could not be tabled in Parliament because the document had not been declassified.
He said: “I cannot allow a classified document to be tabled in the House. I will be violating the Official Secrets Act 1972 if I allow it.”
Can Pandikar explain how he could ban the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB from being presented to Parliament on the ground that it is a classified document when the same report had earlier been presented to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which is a committee of Parliament, and should have been appended to the PAC Report on 1MDB which was tabled in Parliament yesterday?
Is Pandikar going to report the PAC Chairman, Datuk Hasan Arifin as well as all the PAC members to the police for having committed breaches of the Official Secrets Act when they had access to the Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB?
This is a most ludicrous situation, where a report had beenj presented to a parliamentary select or standing committee, but not to Parliament.
In fact, Pandikar is probably the only Speaker in the world who is barring the presentation of a report in Parliament on the ground that it is a classified document and official secret?
What type of a parliamentary reform is Malaysia pioneering in the world of Parliaments?
In any event, what is in the Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB which is more damaging to government leaders, including the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, that the AG’s final audit report has still to be kept under “lock and key” and denied to the general public, while the PAC report on the 1MDB could be released?
What are these more damaging materials in the Auditor-General’s final audit report to the government and the Prime Minister as compared to the PAC report on the 1MDB?
Is there a “smoking gun” in the Auditor-General’s final audit report, directly implicating Najib in the 1MDB scandal?
Furthermore, how could the Najib administration convince Malaysians and the world that it has been completely transparent and accountable in the PAC investigations into 1MDB when there are materials in the AG’s final audit report which are regarded as even more damaging than the PAC report?
The PAC Chairman Datuk Seri Hasan Arifin had publicly made a commitment that the Auditor-General’s final audit report would be made public when the PAC Report is tabled in Parliament.
Members of Parliament as well as Malaysians are entitled to know who is the person responsible for overruling the PAC Chairman. Who made the final decision that the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB could not be made public – was he the PAC Chairman, the Speaker or the Prime Minister himself?
Does Najib hav any objection to the publication of the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB, and the reasons? Let us hear from the Prime Minister.
(Speech at the DAP “Battle of Sarawak, Battle for Malaysia” fund-raising dinner held at Starlight Seafood Naturalle, Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 7th April 2016)