Disaster for Malaysia has struck three in a row – to the detriment of Malaysia as a favourite foreign investor haven and the pride of Malaysians about the international reputation, standing and ranking of Malaysia in the international community of nations.

First, Malaysia overnight became a global kleptocracy (I defined in Parliament as a government of 3Ps – Pencuri, Perompak and Penyamun), as result of the infamous international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal, with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) filing the largest kleptocratic civil suit to forfeit some US$1.7 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland, naming 1MDB culprits including the easily identifiable “MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL 1” (“MO1”) and the Penang billionaire Jho Low; now superseded by DOJ’s latest decision to ask for its civil suits for the forfeiture of the 1MDB-linked assets to be put on hold while the DOJ and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) focus on criminal invesgigations into the 1MDB scandal.

Second, we became a kakistocracy – a government by the worst people in the country, completely unscrupulous and unprincipled, where the various national instruments were wantonly abused to prop up kleptocracy in the country. An example is the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) arrest of Penang DAP Exco member, Phee Boon Boh, clearly not to fight corruption but to “whitewash” and distract public attention from the1MDB global kleptocracy scandal, “MO1” and the RM117 million 22-carat rare pink diamond necklace stolen from 1MDB funds and giv en to the “wife of MO1” as a gift by Jho Low.

But a third disaster was waiting to strike against Malaysia, and this happened today when international Islamic scholars and academicians, like Professor Zachary Abuza and Almad el-Muhammady, declared that Malaysia is not the moderate state that it used to be and that Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “Global Movement of Moderates” initiative was nothing but a big bluff on the international stage. Read the rest of this entry »