Today is the ninth anniversary of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Parliament is expected to be dissolved in three days’ time on Friday, April 6, 2018.
All patriotic Malaysians are given an opportunity in the 14th General Election which should be held in a month’s time to ensure that Najib will not be able to mark his 10th anniversary as Prime Minster of Malaysia on this day next year.
Malaysia must rise again in the international community respected and admired by the world as a top world-class nation and not tarnished and scorned as a global kleptocracy doubling up as a truant parliamentary democracy.
It is most ironic that on the 9th anniversary of his premiership, Najib’s political legacy lies in ruins.
What has happened to his 1Malaysia objective to build a Malaysia where every Malaysian regards himself as Malaysian first and his or her race, religion, region or socio-economic status second?
Najib’s 1Malaysia objective has been smashed to smithereens by the Election Commission’s Constituency Redelineation Report which for the first time in the nation’s history uses racial polarisation as chief principle to redelineate parliamentary and state assembly constituencies for the 14th General Election.
Constituencies are turned into super-large non-Malay voter constituencies or mini Malay voter constituencies in Peninsular Malaysia, believing that this is the formula to keep Najib and UMNO/Barisan Nasional in power in Putrajaya and in the various states.
But these premises and calculations would be proved gravely wrong if voters in the 14th General Election vote more as Malaysians, than as Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazans or Ibans, especially in electing new governments at both at the Federal and various State levels committed to Save Malaysia from the triple infamy, ignominy and iniquity of a global kleptocracy doubling up as a rogue parliamentary democracy.
Today, the Anti-Fake News Bill will be debated and passed by the Senate, after it had been steamrolled through the Dewan Rakyat yesterday and I expect it to be put on the statute books before Parliament is dissolved on Friday.
As Steven Gan of Malaysiakini, a victim of selective prosecution, has soberly and somberly warned, the aim of the Anti-Fake News law is clear – to sow fear among Malaysians and terrorise them into unquestioned submission, describing it as “the final nail in the coffin of our already floundering democracy”.
It is not a law to protect the people but to protect the Najib government.
As I predicted at the DAP forum “Has PAC cleared Najib of wrongdoing over 1MDB?” at Tropical Inn, Johor Baru on Sunday, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman, who is piloting the Anti-Fake News Bill through Parliament, would not dare to respond to the query whether
Najib will be the first to be charged under the Anti-Fake News Act 2018 for the fake news that he has been cleared by the PAC of any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal when the Bill becomes law.
Her omission and evasion of this question will be the best proof that the Anti-Fake News legislation is not to fight fake news especially those coming from Barisan Nasional quarters, but the latest censorship to stop continuing expose of corruption and abuses of power in the country, like the 1MDB scandal.
At the forum, I referred to a long and detailed article which appeared in Swiss magazine, Republik, on corruption in Sabah in the past 15 years entitled: “UBS in the jungle”, as the magazine’s journalists had examined more than one thousand pages of bank statements and court documents, and carried out extensive interviews with more than a half-dozen people involved in Europe and Asia.
But the story which is available online, of the corruption and money-laundering scandal about logging in Sabah in the past 15 years, including reports on anti-corruption investigations and arrests, had been buried by the global corruption and money-laundering scandal – the 1MDB scandal!
The expose of corruption in Sabah by the Swiss magazine last week is further proof of the depths Malaysia has fallen in international esteem and respect in being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy.
Undoubtedly, one of the first tasks of a new Pakatan Harapan Government in Putrajaya after the 14GE will be to ensure that there is a truly independent Election Commission fully cognisant of its mandate spelt out in the Constitution about commanding public confidence and the conduct of free, fair and honest elections.
The other is the repeal of the Anti-Fake News Act.
Only a change of government in the 14th General Election can end Malaysia’s long night of international shame as a global kleptocracy and a rogue democracy.
Whether Malaysia can be saved from the triple ignominy, infamy and iniquity as a global kleptocracy and a democracy gone rogue will be decided by the Malaysian voters in the 14th General Election, which will also decide whether Najib is able to mark his tenth anniversary as Prime Minister of Malaysia!
(Media Statement in Parliament on Tuesday, April 3, 2018)