Tun Daim Zainuddin is half-right – Pakatan Harapan should not dance to the tune of former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, but should compel Najib to dance to the tune of the Pakatan Harapan narrative.

I do not agree with Daim that Pakatan Harapan should forget about Najib, as the former Prime Minister is the de facto leader not only of UMNO-PAS axis, but the unofficial opposition combination which included MCA and MIC, but also PBS and the other Sabah other opposition parties and GPS in Sarawak.

The landslide 11,52-vote majority victory of DAP, Pakatan Harapan and Warisan in the Sandakan by-election on May 11 is not only a debacle for PBS, but of the combined Oppostion and Najib’s “Malu Apa Bossku” narrative, as PBS was only a digit of Najib’s great gameplan to ensure that the Pakatan Harapan Government would at most be a one-term government and that Najib’s travails would end by the 15th General Election and he could escape life in Sungai Buloh Prison.

A commentator had described the PBS candidate Linda Tsen as a reluctant candidate and that she had political baggage. I believe that PBS was an even greater reluctant political party to field a candidate in the Sandakan by-election as PBS had even greater political baggage after singly ruling for 10 years and as part of Barisan Nasional for 16 years.

But despite such mighty reluctance, PBS was prepared to “play ball” with “Malu Apa Bossku” campaign.

This goes for the other opposition parties as well.

I flew to Sandakan thrice from KLIA during the Sandakan by-election campaign period, and in two of my three trips, a top MCA national leader was taking the same flight to Sandakan, although in the first class section as compared to my economy class status.

But this top MCA national leader never surfaced publicly in Sandakan campaign, keeping to the backroom.

This unholy support and subordination to the UMNO-PAS axis and the “Malu Apa Bossku” campaign is the reason for the MCA top leader’s surreptitious and furtive support for PBS candidate in the Sandakan by-election. Possibly, one reason for PBS’ historic defeat in Sandakan is the result of following the “surreptitious and furtive” advice of such a top MCA leader!

Najib has clearly a strategy for the next general election – to defeat Pakatan Harapan and engineer his return to power, if not as Prime Minister but as the kingmaker, which would also end his present court travails save him from ending his life in Sungai Buloh Prison.

MCA, MIC and all the former parties in the Barisan Nasional are playing safe so as to get back to power on Najib’s coattails, which is why none of these former Barisan Nasional parties have spoken out loud and clear to denounce the 1MDB scandal and Najib’s legacy of a global kleptocracy.

Najib is still their insurance policy to have a life after the 14th General Election.

It is a fallacy to believe that one can forget about Najib as he is no more a force to be reckoned with.

In actual fact, Najib remains the most potent political force plotting the downfall of the Pakatan Harapan government, as the person who is behind the highly-funded army of cybertroopers and propagandists who are working day and night for the disintegration and collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government with their politics and social media of lies and falsehoods incite hatred, intolerance and extremism.

This is why the Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, recently said it is “strange” that Najib could still act innocent during the ongoing investigation of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal, and could even cobble together a UMNO-PAS axis and win over the PAS President, Datuk Seri Hadi Awang to endorse Najib’s kleptocratic legacy.

In the past week, we see Najib remonstrating his innocence in the 1MDB scandal, adopting a thousand and one excuses and strategies, from denying that assets seized from the Pavilion Residences condominium units, which included more than 10,000 pieces of jewellery, were purchased by fugitive financier Jho Low’s using stolen 1MDB funds to his latest stance that he is a victim of Jho Low’s 1MDB conspiracy.

Would Najib now admit, what is now universal knowledge with ongoing 1MDB investigations in 10 countries in the past few years, that there is such a thing as a 1MDB scandal which ended up with Malaysia being condemned as a global kleptocracy – putting aside for the moment whether Najib is the mastermind, co-mastermind or victim of the 1MDB scandal – or is all the talk about 1MDB scandal just one great fantasy and invention of the Pakatan Harapan government?

(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah on Monday, 20th May 2019)