When major national institutions go “rogue” and refuse to perform their key fundamental functions, Malaysians regardless of race, religion or region must stand up to unite as patriotic Malaysians to Save Malaysia from becoming a “rogue” state.

Recent days have seen many of the major national institutions abdicating their fundamental duties, which was one reason why former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamad said at a forum last night that the country would see better progress without current Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamad Apandi Ali.

Only a day earlier, the Swiss attorney-general Michael Lauber expressed confidence that the money-laundering probe into the scandal-hit Malaysian fund 1MDB by the Swiss Office of Attorney-General (OAG) would bear fruit despite Malaysian authorities’ refusal to cooperate.

Lauber told a news conference “”It’s not hopeless, in fact it’s the opposite”, saying the probe was making progress based on money-laundering reports, bank documents and work with Singapore and other countries.

He said: “It would have been very desirable from our perspective if Malaysia had cooperated.”

But “we’re still confident that we can successfully conclude the process in this area, in particular in the open cases against the two banks,” he said, referring to Swiss private banks BSI and Falcon.

In presenting his 2016 annual report on the activities of the Swiss OAG, Lauber said that the Swiss authorities would not tolerate “things” like 1MDB, Petrobas or the whole FIFA soccer corruption scandals.

What a national shame that Malaysia should be berated by another foreign country and included in the ranks of international corruption scandals!

Would Apandi resign as Attorney-General if the Swiss investigations into the 1MDB money-laundering scandal bear fruit, despite his rebuffing of Switzerland’s request for legal assistance in probing 1MDB?

This is not an isolated case of key national institutions and principal officials in Malaysia abdicating from their key fundamental responsibilities, the others being the office of the Prime Minister, the Executive, the Police, the Election Commission, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Judiciary, Parliament and even the office of Speaker of Parliament.

With the key national institutions breaking down one after another, the 60th National Day anniversary celebrations should be an occasion for patriotic Malaysians to unite to re-set nation-building directions and policies to ensure that the promises and dreams of Merdeka in 1957 and Malaysia in 1963 to create a united, harmonious, democratic, incorruptible, just, progressive and prosperous multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation return to their key and central place in all national policies and programmes.