The forthcoming 14th General Election will decide whether the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak can “outwit” 30 million Malaysians with the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal which has given Malaysia the infamy and ignominy of a “global kleptocracy”.

The spurious assertion by the Minister for Communications and Multimedia, Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak, yesterday that Najib was right in creating the “fake news” that the next general election is a choice between an UMNO-led government and a DAP-led government is one of the tactics and strategies which UMNO/BN leaders and propagandists are relying to “outwit” the Malaysian people that the 1MDB scandal and kleptocracy have nothing to do with 14GE.

Salleh’s blogpost yesterday is part and parcel of the insidious, divisive and disruptive “Great Design” to falsely portray the forthcoming 14th General Election as firstly a battle between Malays and the Chinese; and secondly, that it is a battle between Islam and the enemies of Islam.

Unfortunately, 1MDB scandal is so gargantuan and global that there is no way to keep its “ghosts” under wraps, although the mainstream media in Malaysia and the public institutions, whether Parliament, the Attorney-General’s Chambers, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) or the Police, all conspire in the the great pretense that the 1MDB scandal does not exist.

Najib and UMNO/BN, however, cannot control international events, and the 1MDB scandal continue to haunt and hound Najib and Malaysians almost every other day – as seen by the two international news items yesterday “Singapore convicts fifth person over 1MDB scandal” and “Jho Low’s Park Lane Hotel in New York on sale now”, not to mention the recent spate of 1MDB-related developments related to Bandar Malaysia and TRX.

It is significant that although Salleh was responding to my media statement “Malaysians do not know whether to laugh or to cry!”, he avoided the core issue of my comment altogether – the supreme irony where Najib claimed that his government is No. 1 in the world in transparency and government delivery on the very same day that TIME magazine included Najib in its list of five world leaders who it claims are less popular than United States President Donald Trump.

Attempts to falsely frame the battle in the forthcoming the 14th General will be the very antithesis of the wasatiyyah values of moderation, justice and balance, because they are downright false, untrue and lies.

The forthcoming 14th General Election is not a battle between Malays and Chinese, nor is it a battle between Islam and the enemies of Islam.

The 14th General Election is a battle between Malaysians who want a democracy vs Malaysians who want a kleptocracy.

It is for Malaysians, regardless of race or religion to ponder deep and hard why Malaysia in the past six decades had failed to live up to the promise when we achieved Merdeka on August 31, 1957 to be united, harmonious, democratic, progressive, prosperous multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation; save Malaysia and re-set nation-building directions and policies for Malaysians to compete with the rest of the world and not to fight among ourselves and lose out in the international race of nations for development and progress.