The letter of the Research Division in the Prime Minister’s Department to the CIA before the 14th General Elections on May 4 seeking US support against Pakatan Harapan must have given Malaysians the shivers, reinforcing the view that the greatest thing to happen in Malaysia was the change of Federal government in Putrajaya on May 9 or nobody can be assured what would have happened to the future of Malaysia.
The letter by the Research Division’s director-general Hasanah Ab Hamid to the CIA painting the former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak as a progressive leader and a staunch supporter of the US while describing the leader of of the Pakatan Harapan Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as “anti-West” should never have been sent by any self-respecting government or official.
It is just not good enough for Najib to now claim that he, as the Prime Minister at the time, did not instruct the Research Division in the Prime Minister’s Department to pen the letter to the CIA seeking US support for the Barisan Nasional against Pakatan Harapan five days before the May 9 general election.
It raised many questions, in particular whether the Najib government was so shambolic and even anarchic that the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing, and the Prime Minister did not know what was happening in the PMO or his governemnt?
If so, Najib is clearly the worst Prime Minister in Malaysian history.
But there is an even more serious question – how can a caretaker govenrment pen such a disgraceful and even disloyal letter to the intelligence organ of a foreign government asking for foreign interference in the domestic affairs of Malaysia?
Najib’s claim that he had no knowledge about the letter is a very lame and completely unacceptable.
Najib said he did not even know of its existence as “Not all letters have to go through me”.
His claim that agencies, especially those related to intelligence matters, have the autonomy to perform their duties for reasons they think would benefit them must be repudiated in no uncertain terms, and the Pakatan Harapan government must make it clear that no agencies under it have any authority to send such a self-serving and disloyal letter to any foreign governmenmt.
I had asked the MCA Deputy President, Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong, now sole MCA MP for Ayer Hitam, to state in Parliament whether he was aware and approved of Hasanah’s letter to CIA as he was at the time the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, but as expected, Wee completely avoided the subject when he later spoke in Parliament in the debate on the motion of thanks for the royal speech.
Let Najib turn up in Parliament on Monday and justify the despatch of the shocking letter from the Research Division in the Prime Minister’s Department to the CIA five days before the 14th General Election, and he should also take the opportunity to explain when Parliament approved the setting up of an intelligence unit in the Prime Minister’s Office and the details about the budget and operations the secret intelligence unit under him.
(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Parliament on Thursday July 19, 2018)