The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak should immediately declassify the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB not only to take the wind out of the sails of the whistleblowing site, Sarawak Report, but to show to the world that the Malaysian Prime Minister and government have nothing to hide about allegations of 1MDB multi-billion ringgit global embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption.
The option to keep the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB secret and classified under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) was never a tenable, sustainable or wise decision in this information age when information travels at the speed of light in a borderless world, especially when the decision went against all notions of good governance and principles of accountability and transparency, as well as public pledges by the Prime Minister, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the Auditor-General himself that the AG’s Report would be made available to the public.
With the announcement by the Sarawak Report website that it is publishing in full the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB, after it had carried daily exposes of the AG’s Report on 1MDB in the past few days, Najib and the Malaysian Government are only inviting global scorn, contempt and humiliation if they continue to keep the AG’s Report under wraps in Malaysia under the OSA while it is available to the world as well as to Malaysians on the borderless Internet.
The Cabinet at its meeting yesterday should have discussed the subject of the declassification of the AG’s Report to defend Malaysia’s international reputation and image. Was this subject discussed by the Ministers yesterday?
Najib and the Malaysian Government should cut their losses and immediately declassify the Auditor-General’s Report on 1MDB unless there are compelling reasons which do not allow the Najib administration to do so – and if so, it could have nothing to with the national security as the AG’s Report had been the basis of the PAC proceedings and report on the 1MDB, and in fact, the AG’s Report on 1MDB is an integral part of the PAC Report on 1MDB and should have appeared as an appendix of the PAC Report on 1MDB when it was tabled in Parliament on April 7.
There could only be one reason why the AG’s Report on 1MDB cannot be made public, that it would point incriminating fingers unerringly on the culpability and guilt of those responsible for Malaysia’s first global scandals – the RM55 billion 1MDB and Najib’s RM4.2 billion twin mega scandals – and the charges of multi-billion ringgit global embezzlement, money-laundering and corruption which are the subject of investigations by seven other national jurisdictions.
Is this the reason?
Najib cannot continue to be silent and must speak up why he is compromising the nation’s international reputation and standing by obstinately refusing to make the AG’s Report on 1MDB public?