I am very disappointed.

Throughout the nearly three-hour budget presentation by the Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, I did not hear the single reference to the interntional multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal which had overnight transformed Malaysia into a global kleptocracy.

How can Najib boast that the 2018 Budget which he had presented is the “Mother of All Budgets” – that no other budget “during the last 22 years or the past 60 years of our own nation” had never been crafted so well – when he dare not even mention address the 1MDB “mother of all scandals” which transformed Malaysia overnight into a global kleptocracy!

I am shocked that Najib should claim that he is even better than his father, Tun Razak who had presented a budget as Finance Minister.

At the DAP “Love Malaysia, Save Malaysia, Change Malaysia” dinner at Cheng in Malacca last night, I had asked Najib to start his belated defence of the 1MDB scandal and on Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy, as he had three days ago, issued a 81-paragraph blog on “My Economic Vision for Malaysia” which is remarkable for his attempt for the first time to white-wash the 1MDB scandal.

I thought he was preparing the way for the full-defence of the 1MDB scandal in his 2018 Budget presentation today, but he dared not even mention the 1MDB scandal and the global kleptocracy which Malaysia is known world-wide under his premiership.

It is Najib who should ponder deep and hard the example from the history of the prophets and highlighted by Imam Ghazali and Bapa Hamka, “What is the point of being wealthy but weak in soul” (“apalah guna kita hanya kaya harta, tetapi miskin jiwa.”

As a result, Najib’s 2018 Budget can only qualify to be the “mother of all hypocritical budgets” as Najib himself must tell Malaysians what has he learnt after pondering the injunction of “What is the point of being wealthy but weak in soul”.

[Media Comment in Parliament on Friday, 27th October 2017,/em>]