Today’s Barisan Nasional owned and controlled media are full of pictures and story of the Parti Warisan Sabah vice president Datuk Peter Anthony, in handcuffs and in orange-coloured MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) lock-up uniform being taken to the Kota Kinabalu courthouse to be remanded for five days for further MACC investigations in connection with the siphoning off of some RM7.5 billion to supply water, electricity and roads to the rural poor.

I do not know anything about the latest Sabah corruption case, but I know there is a conspiracy and plot to get the MACC to arrest me under the allegation that former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had given me a RM1 billion bribe and parade me in handcuffs in orange-coloured MACC lock-up uniform.

This, according to the UMNO/BN election strategists, would be the best way to counter the kleptocratic allegations against Najib over the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal which had turned Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy.

The top UMNO/BN election strategists had brain-stormed long and hard as to what is the most effective way to counter the main issue against Najib in the “do-or-die” 14th General Election – the kleptocratic allegations, not only in Malaysia but world-wide, against Najib because of the 1MDB scandal.

The most powerful and effective way to counter and destroy this attack on Najib over kleptocracy and 1MDB scandal would be for Najib to prove that he is clean, honest and trustworthy, that there is no 1MDB scandal and that the lies about the US Department of Justice (DOJ) allegations against him as a kleptocrat and “MO1” are just utter lies and falsehoods.

Unfortunately, Najib had done nothing in the past few years to clear or cleanse himself of these kleptocratic allegations.

In fact what Najib had done had only reinforced these allegations, as in Parliament, Members of Parliament are not allowed to ask questions or even debate the 1MDB scandal. In fact, I was suspended from Parliament for six months because I insisted in wanting to know the full story about the 1MDB scandal.

This has presented the UMNO/BN strategists with a great problem – how counter and destroy the kleptocratic allegations against Najib over the 1MDB scandal when Najib cannot clear or cleanse himself of these 1MDB allegations?

The second best option for the UMNO/BN strategists to deal with Najib’s kleptocratic allegations over 1MDB is to neutralize them through a campaign of character-assassination of DAP and Pakatan Harapan leaders and tar them with corruption allegations, to make the point that all political leaders whether Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Harapan are corrupt and that it is a matter of “half kati and six tahils”.

DAP Secretary-General and Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng had been charged with corruption in a very clear cased of political persecution.

Now UMNO/BN strategists are trying to implicate Mahathir and me in one of the wildest allegations that Mahathir had given me a RM1 billion bribe, even claiming that RM750 million had already been paid into my bank accounts outside the country.

There are even some UMNO/BN strategists who want MACC to arrest me over the outrageous RM1 billion bribe allegation, put me in orange-coloured MACC lock-up uniform and parade me throughout the country as the best way to counter the kleptocratic allegations against Najib.

Malaysians must know the truth of what is happening in the country.

I will meet my lawyers next week on my instruction to them to take out a test case to sue the media which printed lies and defamatory material about me receiving RM1 billion bribe from Mahathir.

We are seeing a new modus operandi in character-assassination and spreading of lies and falsehoods against DAP and Pakatan Harapan leaders.

When we ignore the lies and falsehoods being spread at first outside the country and later taken up in the country by irrelevant and inconsequential propaganda digits who have no credibility whatsoever, UMNO/BN-owned media would be used to spread these lies and falsehoods.

Are these media protected from defamatory proceedings for re-cyling such lies and falsehoods?

This is the test case which I have instructed my lawyers to initiate and institute.

(Media Conference Statement in Seremban after visiting the Seremban Central Market fire victims on Saturday, October 7 at 11 am)