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.

In his pre-2018 Budget declaration, Najib also attempted to white-wash the 1MDB scandal, making the ridiculous claim that 1MDB could have saved Malaysia RM200 billion over the next 20 years in solving the “lop-sided power agreements” if not because of “economic sabotage”, as well as alluding to 1MDB’s “share of problems” which he claims to have resolved as “we long ago revamped the management to correct the mistakes and bring it back to financial health”.

In actual fact, as clearly documented by the United States Department of Justice largest kleptocratic litigation to forfeit US$1.7 billion 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland, and which are now suspended pending criminal investigations by the United States authorities, as well as in various financial and criminal actions and investigations by over half a dozen countries, including Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, the United Kingdom and Australia, 1MDB was meant to be an international money-laundering scam right from the beginning – which is the reason why Malaysia is suffering the infamy and ignominy of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy.

Najib’s 2018 Budget cannot lay claim to be “mother of all budgets” if he cannot claim the moral high ground of integrity, incorruptibility, good governance, transparency, accountability.

For a start, is Najib prepared to allow a full parliamentary debate on the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia as a global kleptocracy in the final budget debate of the present Parliament beginning on Monday?

(Speech at the Penang DAP State Deepavali reception at Juru on Saturday, 28th October 2017 at 12 noon)