The Prime Minister-cum-Finance Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, cannot take the moral high ground to claim that his 2018 Budget which he presented to Parliament yesterday is the best in the nation‘s 60-year history as the “mother of all budgets” when it dared not address the most basic moral question in governance, the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB money-laundering scandal and Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy during Najib’s premiership.

For five years, Najib had studiously avoided the issue of the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia’s infamy and ignominy as a global kleptocracy in his annual budget speech in Parliament, but three days before his 2018 Budget presentation in Parliament yesterday, he came out with a 81-paragraph statement ringing praise for his financial and economic stewardship of the country. Read the rest of this entry »