No loyal and patriotic Malaysian can read the updated 251-page USA Department of Justice (DOJ) kleptocratic suit to forfeit US$1.7 billion MDB-linked assets arising from US$4.5 billion 1MDB money-laundering scandal without intense shame, consternation and horror and only those who are prepared to commit treason will be unaffected, unmoved and untouched by the US DOJ action.

This year is the 60th National Day anniversary from the attainment of Merdeka on August 31, 1957, and it is sad and tragic that we have this year the expanded 251-page US DOJ kleptocratic action – which represents the nation’s greatest shame in our 60-year history.

Anyone who wants to understand the meaning of kleptocracy just need to read the 251-page DOJ’s kleptocratic action to forfeit the 1MDB-linked assets, which lays out in shocking detail the results of ongoing meticulous and exhaustive investigations into 1MDB by the US DOJ, which should have been done by the Malaysian authorities!

I call for a nation-wide people’s campaign for the collective resignation of Cabinet if the 36 Ministers cannot do anything at its meeting on Wednesday, 21st June, to purge Malaysia of the ignominy and infamy of regarded world-wide as a global kleptocracy.

Ministers who have not read the updated DOJ’s 251-page kleptocratic action against 1MDB by Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting should identify themselves, for clearly they are not fit to be in the Cabinet, bereft of a minimum sense of responsibility to protect the good name and reputation of Malaysia in the global arena – and should resign in disgrace even before Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting or be sacked from the Cabinet.

The 36 Ministers must place the kleptocratic scandal of the expanded 251-page US DOJ kleptocratic suit against 1MDB assets on top of the Cabinet agenda next Wednesday, and decide on how to cleanse and purge Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of being regarded world-wide as a “global kleptocracy” – failing which, the Cabinet should collectively resign for failing or unable to defend Malaysia’s good name and reputation in the world.

The updated 251-page US DOJ kleptocratic action against 1MDB is really a “shocker”, or to be more correct “a Shocker of Shockers”, for it reveals not only the complex web of deceit and treachery in stealing billions of ringgit of 1MDB funds for personal and private use and aggrandizement, but the depths of depravity some Malaysians had been prepared to descend to steal and lavish on themselves billions of ringgit of public funds from the 1MDB scam.

The Defence Minister, Datuk Hishammuddin Hussein said two days ago that the latest US DOJ filing would divert attention from a bigger agenda.

Hishamuddin could not be more wrong, for there can be no bigger agenda in Malaysia than to ensure that democracy in Malaysia does not mutate into a kleptocracy, and the national imperative to uphold integrity in public life.

Hishammuddin’s father, Tun Hussein Onn, the third Prime Minister, would have fully agreed with me.

When Hussein passed away in San Francisco on May 29, 1990 while undergoing medical treatment, I paid him a tribute and said:

“Hussein Onn will shine out in Malaysian history for his impeccable personal integrity and abhorrence of corruption, and is leadership is particularly missed at a time when abuses of power, corruption, financial and moral scandals have become commonplace in the corridors of power.”

I have no doubt that if Malaysia had been accused of being “global kleptocracy” when Hussein was Prime Minister, he would have made the clearing of Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a “global kleptocracy” his top personal and government agenda and would have no hesitation in tendering his resignation as Prime Minister if he is unable to clear or cleanse the nation of such international infamy and ignominy.

Does Hishammuddin agree with me, or am I wrong in attributing such qualities of uncompromising commitment to public integrity to his father – the third Prime Minister of Malaysia?

Are there any modern-day Hussein Onns in the present-day Najib Cabinet?

Malaysians will know soon enough whether there are any patriotic Ministers who are prepared to make a principled stand to quit the Cabinet if is unable or unprepared to respond honourably to the expanded DOJ kleptocratic action against the international maze of 1MDB money-laundering and to clear or cleanse Malaysia’s ignominy and infamy for being regarded worldwide as a “global kleptocracy”.

(Speech at the Cheras DAP General Election Preparations Dinner held in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, 17th June 2017 at 9 pm)