Former UMNO/Barisan Nasional Ministers and officials have followed the example of the first two BN speakers, Zahid Hamidi and Wee Ka Siong, in the continuing debate on the royal address in Parliament to shroud the international 1MDB money-laundering scandal in a conspiracy of silence, deploying all sleights-of-hand and employing all possible stratagems and devices to do so, as illustrated by the following:

Firstly, staging of a 65th birthday bash in Parliament House for Datuk Seri Najib Razak, which had never happened in Najib’s nine-year premiership and the testimonial by his wife, Rosmah Mansoh, that Najib is “a very truthful man and he is on the right path” – a testimonial and the person giving the testimonial which very few in Malaysia or the world would regard as credible at all.

Secondly, Wee Ka Siong creating a mountain out of a molehill claiming that the Prime Minister’s replying to a parliamentary question on behalf of Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng could be because of Guan Eng’s incompetence or Tun Dr. Mahathir’s lack of confidence in Guan Eng.

In fact, there was nothing wrong in what happened as Mahahtir would be the proper person to answer Zahid’s question about Japanese loans as it was Mahathir himself who during his visit to Japan in the middle of last month had raised the subject of Japanese yen credit in the form of soft loans partly to retire old loans to offset high borrowing costs. In fact, the Parliamentary Opposition Leader, Zahid Hamidi, might have wrongly directed his question to the Finance Minister.

But what eclipsed both these incidents were the denial by Najib of signing off RM470 million from 1MDB to UMNO/BN parties – for how is this to square with former UMNO Minister and Barisan Nasional Back Benchers’ Club Tan Sri Shahrir Samad’s admission of receiving RM1 million from Najib after Sarawak Report revealed in August 2015 that Najib had distributed 1MDB monies of RM1 million to Shahrir and RM2 million to UMNO Deputy Minister, Datuk Ahmad Maslan after the 13th General Election. Read the rest of this entry »