After 52 years in politics, I thought no propaganda offensive and lies, however bizarre or outlandish, would have surprised me but I was wrong.
I refer to the scurrilous attack by Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s aide, Tengku Sarifuddin Tengku Ahmad on former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, playing on Mahathir’s description of himself as “top dog” of Pakatan Harapan and claiming that in reality the “top dog’s leash in Kit Siang’s hand”.
In my 52 years in Malaysian politics, I had faced six Prime Ministers – Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Mahathir Mohamad, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib himself, but I had never descended to the gutter level of making personal attacks on anyone or them, always respecting the highest offices in the land and the personalities involved.
The term “top dog” may not be the most apt and correct term, but it must be regarded as an absolute “No No” in Malaysian politics to have to raid the animal kingdom to lower the bar in personal attacks on political opponents, especially a former Prime Minister who had been the longest-serving premier in the nation’s history! It is a sad reflection on Najib himself, and not so much on Sarifuddin (who is utterly of no consequence) that the propaganda offensive against Mahathir and Pakatan Harapan leaders have reached such a new depth, scraping the bottom of the barrel, in personal attacks.
In my experience of six Prime Ministers, I have not seen a Prime Minister who has been under such a siege on all fronts as the present one.
Despite herculean efforts and astronomical expenses to present Najib as a respected world leader, the 1MDB scandal has refused to die – on the contrary, becoming even more monstrous in magnitude and criminality with every passing month.
The latest blows were:
Firstly, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ)’s third forfeiture suits totaling US$1.7 billion 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland derived from funds money-laundered from stolen 1MDB, increased from US$3.5 billion in the initial US DOJ suits last July to US$4.5 billion which also saw US DOJ indictment of the largest kleptocratic suit increasing from 126 pages to 251 pages; and
Secondly, the conviction and imprisonment of the fifth former banker in Singapore, Yeo Jiawei, a wealth planner with BSI Singapore, for embezzlement and money-laundering of 1MDB money.
Before Yeo, four bankers received jail sentences and fines for similar offences in Singaporean courts.
Singapore has also closed down the branches of two foreign banks for moving 1MDB-tainted money.
Singaporean prosecutors have also claimed that about US$1 billion (RM4.3 billion) of 1MDB funds meant for a joint-venture with Arab firm Petro Saudi International Ltd made its way into the bank accounts of Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low.
In Malaysia, the Cabinet, Parliament and top national institutions like the Attorney-General’s Chambers, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Police and Bank Negara, all took part in an elaborate charade pretending that the world’s largest kleptocracy scandal and Malaysia being regarded word-wide as a global kleptocracy do not exist.
Nobody dare to ask who is “MO1” or “wife of MO1”, although every informed Malaysian know their identities.
Instead of full accountability and good governance, we have infantile attempts to defend the indefensible, like the utterly inane analogy given by the UMNO Information Chief and former UMNO Minister to justify the 1MDB scandal:
“If I give my son RM10, it is a normal transaction between father and son. But if my son buys drugs with the money and he is caught, then you cannot blame the father.”
I do not think Malaysian educational standards have sunk to such an extent that the current batch of Malaysian students in school could not debunk this high UMNO official’s inane analogy.
This is an occasion where the saying “When it rains, its pours” is most apt, as apart from the cascading 1MDB international scandal, other Najib scandals like the French indictment of two French executives in connection with graft over the US$1.1 billion Scorpene submarine sale to Malaysia fifteen years ago in 2002 have also come alive.
Last night, Najib told his UMNO division chiefs that a majority of the 1.6 million civil servants are returning to support the Barisan Nasional government.
When and how long did Najib and Barisan Nasional government lose the support of the majority of the 1.6 million civil servants?
Najib is whistling in the dark, for three reasons:
Najib cannot recover support from these three sectors by getting his aide to scrape the bottom of the barrel to unleash the most personal and scurrilous attacks on Mahathir and Pakatan Harapan leaders.