The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has jumped on US President Donald Trump’s “fake news” bandwagon, with the same objectives – not to uphold the truth and factual reporting, but to use the “fake news” cover and offensive to achieve the twin objective to discredit stories about legitimate and negative media coverage while spreading lies and falsehoods about Opposition leaders.

This is why the establishment of a government committee to tackle fake news, headed by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department with representatives from the police, the Atttorney-General’s Chambers and the Ministry of Multimedia and Communications is so laughable – as it utterly without credibility just like asking thieves to catch thieves.

It is an incontrovertible fact that in Malaysia today, the biggest manufacturer of fake news and false information is none other than UMNO/Barisan Nasional government, led by none other than the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, himself.

I am one of the biggest victims of Najib and UMNO/BN manufacture of fake news – and even the UMNO General Assembly had been used as platforms for Najib to disseminate such fake news, as for instance, Najib’s trio of fake news the UMNO General Assembly in the past two years, viz: that

1. That the 14th General Election will be a contest between UMNO and DAP;

2. That the DAP is anti-Malay or anti-Islam.

3. The “nightmares” Malay will suffer if UMNO loses power in the next general elections.

Will Datuk Najib appear before the Fake News Committee to publicly apologise for the manufacture and dissemination of the trio of fake news against the DAP in the recent UMNO General Assemblies?

In 2011, my 15-year-old grandson was the victim of malicious “fake news”, that he had sexually molested a girl student in his school, and photographs and identity of the girl was even identified – an international chess play Anya Corke from Hong Kong, who had never met my grandson and was not even in the country.

No action had been taken against those who perpetrated the “fake news” against my grandson, although a police report was lodged by his father, Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng.

Would there be such inertia and inaction if the victim of the “fake news” allegation of sexual molestation had been the son of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or the UMNO/BN political leaders?

With such an example of selective investigation and prosecution, who has any confidence in the Fake News Committee headed by Azalina Othman, as it is none other than a UMNO/BN Fake News Committee to promote fake news against Opposition leaders.

Malaysians must beware not only of fake news and fake news committee which promote UMNO/BN fake news, but also fake news analysis, fake patriotism and fake religious piety.

A few days ago, a political analyst wrote a long political analysis on my speech at the launching of the DAP election centre in the Ayer Hitam parliamentary constituency in Johore last Sunday, on the basis that I had said if Pakatan Harapan wants to take over Putrajaya, it has to wrestle Ayer Hitam from Barisan Nasional.

I never said such a thing. What I said in Ayer Hitam was that if Pakatan Haran can win Ayer Hitam parliamentary seat, then both the Johore State Government and the Federal Government would change hands in the 14GE, as Ayer Hitam is not among the 40 marginal parliamentary seats Pakatan Harapan is targeting to effect a change of Federal Government in Putrajaya in the 14GE.

But this did not prevent the production of long fake news analysis, based on something which I had never said.

Today, the Prime Minister said that a former UMNO leader who claimed Malaysians are embarrassed by their nationality should be cast into the ocean.

This is fake patriotism. It is those who claim that Malaysians are not embarrassed because Malaysia is regarded as a “global kleptocracy”, where thieves and knaves have become leaders of the land, are guilty of fake patriotism.

Najib even said that 1MDB’s RM42 billion debt is not a loss claiming that the money never disappeared.

Najib should answer the questions whether “MO1”, the international multi-billion 1MDB money-laundering scandal and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) litigation and investigation into the 1MDB corruption and money-laundering are just “fake news”.

Only two weeks ago, on the 17th January 2018, the 1MDB kleptocratic scandal was one of three cases mentioned by the US Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney-General, Criminal Division, M. Kendall Day in his testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs hearing on “Combating Money-laundering and other forms of illicit finance”, where it was revealed that out the US$3.5 billion worth of “corruption proceeds to date” seized or restrained under the US Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, half or more than US$1.7 billion in assets were associated with the 1MDB sovereign fund in Malaysia.

As Kendall Day told the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on January 17:

“The Malaysian government created 1MDB to promote economic development through international partnerships and foreign direct investment, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of the Malaysian people.

“However, corrupt 1MDB officials treated this public trust as a personal bank account.

“Between 2009 and 2015, those corrupt officials and their associates took more than $4.5 billion from the development fund in four phases.

“These funds were laundered through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries around the world, including Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg, and the United States.”

Were these all fake news?

Were the corrupt misappropriation of the 1MDB funds to purchase dubious assets, including a $261 million, 350-foot yacht; a $35 million jet; masterpieces by Van Gogh, Picasso, and Monet; and a motion picture company that used the funds to finance, among other things, the production of the films ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ ‘Daddy’s Home,’ and ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ and RM144 million for a pink diamond necklace for the “wife of MO1”, all “fake news”?

Malaysians have also to contend with “fake religious piety”, as we have Malaysians who can on the one hand claim religious piety to the faith they profess and yet in the same breath express their support for grand corruption, global kleptocracy and “MO1”!

(Speech at the DAP Kopitam ceramah in Bukit Mertajam on Friday, 2nd February 2018 at 9 pm)