During the 14th General Election campaign, the 1MDB Chief Executive Officer Arul Kanda Kandasamy toured the country on a national “Tanya Tanya” roadshow, covering over 30 locations, even challenging DAP leaders to ask him questions about what the government claimed was the fake news about the 1MDB international money-laundering scandal.
I said at the the time that nobody was interested in Arul’s fairy tales about the 1MDB scandal, unless the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, stepped forward to account fully for the 1MDB “kleptocracy at its worst” which had landed Malaysia with the ignominy, infamy and iniquity as a global kleptocracy!
When he was Prime Minister, especially in the past three years since July 2015 when information about the RM2.6 billion 1MDB monies went into his personal banking accounts first became interntional news, Najib had avoided the subject of the 1MDB scandal like a plague, sub-contracting it to Arul, probably with the highest remuneration the Malaysian government had ever paid to a private person, all at the taxpayers’ expense!
But the 1MDB scandal was no fake news, which the Najib government had tried to make it into one with the Anti-Fake News Act passed hurriedly before the dissolution of Parliament.
Najib had been very busy in the past few days in a “white-washing” campaign of the 1MDB scandal, starting with a Reuters interview claiming ignorance about the criminality, corruption and the moral turpitude of the 1MDB scandal, and subsequently trying to extricate himself from a mine-field by denying that he had blamed the 1MDB board and management for the financial scandal.
Yesterday, Najib did the “unthinkable”, visiting and giving an interview to Malaysiakini – the news portal which had been banned from several official functions of the Najib administration – which was a crushing vote of no confidence in the stable of UMNO newspaprers including Utusan Malaysia, New Straits Times and Berita Harian by a national leader who has himself lost all public trust and credibility.
Who in Malaysia now believe Najib’s stories?
Pollster Merdeka Centre estimated that 95% of the Chinese voted for Pakatan Harapan while 35-40% of Malays voted Barisan Nasional, another 30-33% supported PAS, and the remaining 25-30% picked Pakatan Harapan. For Indian voters, 70-75% of them supported Pakatan Harapan.
I believe if the general election is held after the truth about the 1MDB scandal and other mini-1MDB-like corruption in MARA, FELDA and other public bodies have become widely known, the majority of Malay voters would have supported Pakatan Harapan and UMNO/BN would not have secured 35-40% of the Malay votes or PAS won 30-33% of the Malay votes.
I do not believe that if the the truths about the 1MDB scandal and the other mini-1MDBs are known, the majority of the Malay voters would want Malaysia to be ridiculed and scorned at by the world in having become a global kleptocracy or support PAS President Datuk Seri Hadi Awang’s plan to become a “kingmaker” to prop up Najib to continue as Prime Minister.
Najib’s “white-washing” campaign of the 1MDB, whether in his interview with Reuters or Malaysiakini, have been dismal failures for they suffer from one common fatal malady – Najib has lost all credibility.
If Najib wants to regain credibility, probably he should personally conduct a special “1MDB Tell-All” special session for UMNO delegates at the UMNO General Assembly this week to ask any and whatever questions about the 1MDB scandal.
(Media Statement in Gelang Patah on Thursday, 28th June 2018)