I wish to report that in the first 24 hours from 12 noon yesterday till 12 noon today, neither MCA President Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai nor the Gerakan President Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong had contacted me in response to my public offer yesterday that I am prepared to meet with them, individually or collectively, any place any time in the ensuing 72 hours to discuss how we can co-operate in the larger national interests to purge and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of being regarded world-wide as a global kleptocracy.
I had asked whether Liow and Mah would have to get UMNO approval before responding. We will wait and see what happens in the rest of the 72-hour offer.
Already, there is a strange political phenomenon. In yesterday’s press, I was the target of massive attacks from all the top MCA and Gerakan leaders for offering during my “Jelajah Desa” at Sungai Gelugor in Penang on Sunday to co-operate with PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang to save Malaysia from becoming a global kleptocracy and a failed and rogue state. In the MCA for instance, all the big guns came out firing – the MCA President, Deputy President, Secretary-General, National Publicity Chief, the MCA Youth leader and even the minnows collectively aimed heavy artillery at me, accusing me of all sorts of unspeakable crimes and treacheries.
But in today’s press, there is only deafening silence from the MCA quarters.
Why have the guns of the MCA leaders suddenly fallen silent?
Is it because they were caught non-plussed and do not know how to react when I said yesterday that in the national interests to purge and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy, I am also prepared to work not only with Hadi, but with Liow, Mah and the Prime Minister and UMNO President Datuk Seri Najib Razak and other Barisan Nasional leaders?
Let me ask Liow and Mah a straightforward question – how can they claim to be Malaysian patriots and love Malaysia if they are totally unconcerned and not prepared to lift a finger to purge and cleanse Malaysia of the international infamy and ignominy of a global kleptocracy?
Let me tell Liow and Mah of the three issues which I will raise with them if we have a meeting before noon of Chinese New Year’s Eve (when the 72 hours expire) as to how Malaysia can restore its reputation and integrity in international society and purge and cleanse itself of the infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy:
Firstly, the Malaysian Cabinet, government and Parliament should stop its pretence that the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB kleptocractic money-laundering scandal does not exist, when Malaysia’s first kleptocratic scandal is creating international waves and makes world headlines almost every other day.
A week ago, I typed “1MDB” into the Google search engine, and I got 255,000 search results in 0.42 seconds. I was shocked beyond belief just now when I typed “1MDB” into the Google search engine, and got 4.41 million results in just 0.32 seconds.
Type “1MDB” into the Malaysiakini search engine and some 200 reports and articles appear just for the past 24 days in January 2017.
How can Malaysia “move on” from the 1MDB scandal in such circumstances?
In his 2016 New Year message more than a year ago on 31st December 2015, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told Malaysians that his RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion donation twin mega scandals had been resolved and were no more issues.
Najib could not be more wrong as the Malaysian government and people continue to be haunted and hounded by the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB kleptocratic money-laundering scandal.
In the past 12 months, Malaysia went from the third “worst corruption scandal of 2015” by international website foreignpolicy.com to second worst example of global corruption by Time magazine in March last year, second place in the index of crony capitalism by the Economist’s ranking in May, and full-blown “global kleptocracy” when in July, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the largest kleptocratic lawsuits to forfeit US$1 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland from US$3.5 billion international 1MDB kleptocratic embezzlement and money-laundering scandal.
There has been no let-up of the incessant international battery and assault of Malaysia’s credibility and reputation in the new year of 2017.
This month, the Australian Federal Police have joined the international bandwagon of investigations into the international 1MDB money-laundering scandal while in Singapore a fourth banker had been jailed for 1MDB money-laundering crimes, and the question as to why Malaysian government is allowing Jho Low to become an economic or corruption international fugitive bulks large in public discourse, whether in Malaysia or internationally.
It is to the eternal shame of Parliament and the UMNO/MCA/Gerakan General Assemblies they had failed to defend the country’s honour and reputation in failing to rebut and refute the ignominy and infamy of being regarded world-wide as a “global kleptocracy” or to purge and cleanse Malaysia of such international infamy and ignominy.
I do not believe that the first four Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein and Tun Mahathir would have stood idly by and done nothing if Malaysia had been regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy during their premiership.
I believe that the fifth Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah would also have acted to defend the honour and reputation of Malaysia if the country is defamed world-wide as a global kleptocracy.
Would past MCA and Gerakan Presidents like Tun Tan Siew Sin or Tun Dr. Lim Chong Eu have agreed to a posture of ostriches digging their heads ever deeper into the sand as a official policy response to the roiling 1MDB scandal? I don’t think so.
2017 is shaping up to be an even worse year than 2016 or 2015, and this is why Malaysians should think and act outside the box to save Malaysia from global kleptocracy and a failed and a rogue state.
My preparedness to co-operate with Hadi, Najib, Liow, Mah and the other BN leaders have shocked and even outraged some Malaysians – but if these BN and PAS leaders are prepared to admit that global kleptocracy is the No. 1 problem plaguing Malaysia, and to work out a common national strategy to purge and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of a global kleptocracy (including full accounting and transparency on the 1MDB scandal and the acts of omission or commission of “MO1”), I believe this option is in the best national interests.
Of course, whether Najib, Hadi, Liow and Mah and the other BN leaders are prepared to agree to this top national priority is another matter.
Secondly, the second anti-kleptocracy issue is why China is catching and jailing “tigers” and “dragons” and Indonesia netting “crocodiles” in their campaign against corruption, but Malaysia has not yet brought to book a single “shark”?
Yesterday, the Auditor-General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang told a conference that up to 30 percent of Malaysia’s public projects’ value could be lost owing to mismanagement and corruption – based on an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank study.
This estimate could be on the low side, as shown in October last year when Malaysia made it into the world league in the Sabah Watergate scandal, where the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said that 60 percent of the RM3.3 billion earmarked by the federal government to improve water supply to Sabahans had been “siphoned off” by corruption.
The MACC scored the biggest ever seizure in its 49-year history, recovering RM114 million from the two top officials of the Sabah Water Department – including RM53.7 million in cold hard cash in Malaysian and various foreign currencies which took more than 30 MACC officers 15 hours to count!
Why is corruption so deep-rooted and rampant in Malaysia after the Abdullah premiership who promised to be a “Justice Pao” to ensure integrity and good governance and nearly seven years of the Najib premiership with the National Transformation programme to eradicate corruption in Malaysia?
Thirdly, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2016 which was released world-wide from Berlin two hours ago, where Malaysia’s ranking fell further from No. 54 last year to No. 55, and the CPI score fell below midpoint of the TI CPI scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) at 49.
I am very relieved that my worst fears had not come to pass as I had dreaded that Malaysia would plunge to the lowest ranking and score in 22-year history of TI CPI in the TI CPI 2016, as the past year had been one of the worst years on the corruption front for Malaysia.
But Malaysia’s TI CPI ranking of No. 55 out of 176 countries and score of 49 out of 100 is indeed a very disgraceful one, considering Malaysia’s past and goals.
When Malaysia improved its ranking from 54th to 53rd position in the TI CPI 2013, the then Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and CEO of Performance Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu), Datuk Seri Idris Jala was ecstatic and declared that Pemandu was aiming for Malaysia to be in the top 30 by 2020.
Now Malaysia has slipped to No. 55, and the goal of Malaysia to be in top 30 countries in TI CPI is nowhere in sight.
In fact, the eighth consecutive year of the Najib premiership (2009 – 2016) has registered a lower TI CPI ranking than under the two previous Prime Ministers, Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah as illustrated by the following chart of TI CPI 1995 – 2016:
| Prime Minister | Best ranking | Best score | Worst ranking | Worst score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mahathir | 23 (1995) | 5.32/10 (1996) | 37 (2003) | 4.8/10 (2000) |
| Abdullah | 39 (2004) | 5.1/10 (2005/7/8) | 47 (2008) | 5/10 (2004/6) |
| Najib | 50 (2014) | 52/100 (2014) | 60 (2011) | 4.3/10 (2011) |
The TI CPI 2016 is proof that corruption is worse now than during Mahathir’s 22 years as Prime Minister and Abdullah’s five years as Prime Minister.
Has the objective for Malaysia to be in the top 30 in the TI CPI been shifted three decades later to 2050 in the 2050 National Transformation Policy (TN50)?
What has Najib, Liow, Mah or the MACC got to say about the continued drop instead of improvement of the TI CPI?
[Media Conference Statement at Wisma Penang DAP in Penang]