Malaysia post-Najib

Mariam Mokhtar

Malaysiakini

29 Feb 2016

It is the great Malaysian apathy which holds Malaysia back. Najib Abdul Razak will eventually leave office, voluntarily or otherwise. You can play an important role in post-Najib Malaysia. You are needed to shake-up the entire establishment.

Will you choose your present life which you believe is bearable? Or will you be brave and leap into the unknown, and entrust your future to a handful of people who are under pressure, and who feel your pain?

Those who lived through Merdeka were idealists. Honour, trust, respect and principle, meant something then. These things mean nothing in 21st Century Malaysia.

Over the past four decades, Malaysian life has become intolerable. You know things are bad when the theft of a mobile phone was politicised into a racial issue. Instead of living life to the full, we have become cynics and our beliefs have become corrupted. Others simply allow themselves to be corrupted.

Everyone, even former ministers and at least one former PM would like to say “Good riddance” to Najib.

A few people want Najib to remain, but even they cannot claim to be pleased with his track record, although they have been amply rewarded for their loyalty. They close one eye to the RM2.6 billion ‘donation’, and the fact that foreign money was used to influence GE13.

The opposition appears to be in disarray, but the alternative is to hand over power to another bunch of power-crazed Umno Baruputras.

Former PM Mahathir Mohamad wants Najib removed, but refuses to admit that Umno Baru is a big part of the problem.

If the RM2.6 billion ‘donation’ had been deposited into Umno Baru’s bank account, instead of Najib’s personal bank account, do you think this donation would have attracted this much publicity?

It is good that PAS’ true colours were discovered sooner, rather than later. The latest statement from PAS president, Hadi Awang is significant.

Hadi has refused to join the anti-Najib rally on March 27 and said, “I am anti-Umno… but not (anti-) Umno people. We (PAS) want to be good with Umno people even though Umno as a party has made many mistakes.”

He is still as wishy-washy as ever.

The rakyat will not forget

In post-Najib Malaysia, the rakyat will not forget who fought for them. The people who maintain that Najib is innocent, will also be made to join him in political exile, or gaol.

If Hadi can see nothing wrong with the billion ringgit ‘donation’ to influence GE13, how can he be entrusted to ensure that proper law enforcement is carried-out under hudud? Will he cherry-pick those whose limbs will be lobbed-off under hudud law?

Najib claims that his administration is not a dictatorship and that his is an elected government.

Few people believe him, especially as the Election Commission has been accused of electoral abuses, ranging from gerrymandering to the use of non-indelible ink.

MCA president Liow Tiong Lai still does not get it. He claimed that Najib has been “working hard to bring transformation and boost the economy”.

What transformation? Is the concept of a transparent and accountable government too difficult for Liow, to grasp?

Former attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail lost his nerve and failed to support former deputy PM Muhyiddin Yassin, when he claimed that Abdul Gani had enough evidence to implicate Najib for corruption.

Abdul Gani’s silence speaks volumes about his character and integrity. He could only mutter, “I do not want to comment anything.” (sic)

Perhaps, the ex-AG remembers the fate of Kevin Morais. Perhaps, Abdul Gani has more to lose than Muhyiddin.

With enough momentum, Malaysians may yet see change, but some people are too selfish to think of their children’s futures.

Initially, post-Najib Malaysia is in for a bumpy ride.

Do not expect that the Umno Baru-paid thugs and cybertroopers will remain quiet. With the loss of their benefactors, and an easy method of making money, they will try to create chaos and havoc. Wouldn’t you be upset if you had to emerge in the real world and do real work?

In post-Najib Malaysia, which institution should be rehabilitated first? The police, the judiciary, the civil service, the Election Commission, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission? Which ones should be disbanded? The Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) and other religious bodies? Which new institution should be formed? Definitely, a police watchdog.

These institutions cannot be disbanded all at once. Malaysia needs a semblance of law and order. Who can we trust? Who should be sent to prison immediately to await trial for corruption and abuses of power?

The opposition coalition has a plan for a complete overhaul of our public institutions, but won’t tell us the details, because they know that Umno Baru will try to sabotage them.

MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).

                This entry was posted on Tuesday, 1 March 2016, 5:58 am and is filed under
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4 factors that determine a society’s fate

– M. Bakri Musa

The Malaysian Insider

1 March 2016

In my earlier two essays, I highlighted the issues surrounding the “Malay problem”.

I suggested that it is not unique unto our community. As such, there is much that we could learn from others, from successful societies on what to do, and the unsuccessful ones on what not to do.

There are four critical factors that determine the fate of a society: leadership, people, culture (this includes institutions, governmental as well as non-governmental, religious as well as non-religious), and geography.

In an earlier book, Towards A Competitive Malaysia, I put forth the concept of the “Diamond of Development”, with each factor interacting with and influencing the other three.

For example, wise leaders would invest in their citizens, ensuring that they would receive good education so they could make better and more informed decisions, as well as be more productive.

Good leaders also foster good institutions, and protect the country’s natural resources and the environment. Educated and wise citizens would in turn elect prudent leaders, and the positive-loop feedback would rapidly lead to a quantum leap in the advancement of that society.

The reverse is also true. Meaning, a corrupt leader would bribe his way to power by literally buying citizens’ votes.

Corrupt citizens would reinforce this negative loop feedback by electing even more corrupt leaders, and a vicious cycle thus ensues. Once that takes hold, the rapid and irreversible decline of a nation into another Nigeria or Pakistan is all but certain.

Malaysia is on that rapid downward trajectory today under Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s leadership.

The perversity is that Najib does not consider his buying of citizens’ votes as a corrupt act. On the contrary he deems that an act of public service!

Let’s explore the interactions of leaders, people, and culture towards geography.

Take Norway and Saudi Arabia. Both are blessed with an abundance of oil. In Saudi Arabia, all you have to do is drill a hole in the desert sand and the oil would gush out. In Norway the oil is below the deep frigid North Sea, swept by huge waves and strong winds. Its oil is considerably more difficult and expensive to extract.

When oil was first discovered there in the 1970s, the Norwegians pretended that they did not have the windfall and saved nearly all their oil earnings. After all they had lived for centuries without the oil bonanza; they saw no reason to change their lifestyle and be suddenly profligate.

As a result, today the Norwegian oil trust fund is expected to reach a trillion (a million million) US dollars by 2020. If all economic activities in the country were to cease, the Norwegians could still live quite well off their trust fund’s earnings.

At another level, because of the fund’s size Norway could impose its own standards for ethical investing. Its investment policies are much more “Islamic” than those of the Saudis.

The Norwegians have, for example, divested from such local Malaysian companies as Samling Global for its illegal logging activities and horrible environmental and ecological practices, as well as from Singapore Engineering Technologies for its production of landmines.

Back to the Saudis, with the drop in oil price, they are now facing a deficit. One could easily imagine those Bedouins reverting to their primitive desert existence once their oil runs out.

Similar geographic blessings, but what a difference in the fate of the two societies simply because of the differences in leadership, people, and culture.

A more local and sinister example of leader/geography toxic dynamics is demonstrated by the environmental disaster now poisoning Kuantan from bauxite mining.

The worse part is that no official, from federal ministers down to the state chief minster, displays any sense of urgency or in any way demonstrates concerns on the ongoing environmental catastrophe. The sultan, despite his frequent public claims of looking after his subjects’ interests, remains curiously silent.

Of the four factors, only one cannot be changed, and that is geography. Why a country is blessed with oil or cursed with typhoons and earthquakes, only Allah knows.

Of the remaining three factors, the easiest to change is leadership. A single bullet eliminated Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and South Korea’s General Pak.

The most difficult to change is culture. Even the most determined leader like Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad had to admit defeat in this endeavour.

People on the other hand are more amenable to change, and quickly too, both individually and as a society.

My Iban friend Thaddeus Demong remembers vividly his headhunter father scalping Japanese soldiers during the war. Through superior education and in only one generation, the young Demong was transformed to a well-known corneal transplant surgeon in Canada.

I used to tease Dr Demong that the only difference between him and his late father is this. Demong Junior is more refined in his skills, harvesting only the corneas rather than the whole head, and getting very well compensated for that!

On a societal level, Lee Kuan Yew transformed Singapore Chinese from one prone to uncouth loud hacking and disgusting spitting on the streets to the most hygienic Asian community.

Visit Beijing and Singapore; the residents in both cities are Chinese, but what a difference in their level of personal and social hygiene! When those mainland Chinese visit the island republic, you can tell them apart right away from the local variety.

In “Liberating the Malay Mind”, I explore the ways in which Malays can change, as individuals as well as a society.

I examine what it is about us, individually as well as collectively, such that we have not been able to change for the better during these past few generations. – March 1, 2016.

* Dr M. Bakri Musa is the author of Liberating The Malay Mind, ZI Publications, Petaling Jaya (2013). This is the third of a six-part piece.

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Achievements of the Father of Corruption

By Martin Jalleh

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 6:23 pm and is filed under
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Dr M’s exit matters little to ordinary folk

Mariam Mokhtar | March 2, 2016

Free Malaysia Today

Comment

The disgruntled Umno-Baru members who are unhappy with Prime Minister Najib Razak should realise that he is not the only problem. The party itself is very much a problem.

Haven’t the rakyat been complaining about the excesses of Umno-Baru’s leaders and senior party members for decades? This is not an overnight occurrence. The problem has been around for at least four decades. Why have these disgruntled party members kept quiet for so long?

Former PM Mahathir Mohamad quit Umno-Baru because, he claimed, he could no longer recognise the party he once led. According to him, Umno-Baru’s sole function now is to protect Najib.

“I can’t be a member of such a party,” he said.

In 2008, Mahathir quit Umno-Baru because he was displeased with Abdullah Badawi’s leadership. He rejoined the party when Abdullah resigned in 2009.

As expected, Najib did not immediately say anything about Mahathir’s exit. The reaction from Abdullah was smiles and more silence. The pro-Najib blogs said good riddance.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said that Mahathir’s criticisms were hurting Umno-Baru and his membership in the party was therefore untenable.

Veteran journalist Kadir Jasin said the party had been dealt a debilitating blow. He described it as a kick in Umno-Baru’s groin.

PKR Deputy President Azmin Ali claimed that Mahathir’s departure from Umno-Baru would have far-reaching consequences on the Malaysian political landscape. “We are witnessing a sea change in Malaysian politics,” he said. “The old walls of division, built upon years of politicking, are finally collapsing.”

Should you be affected by Mahathir’s exit from Umno-Baru?

Those who were tiny children when Mahathir was PM and those who were born after 2000 associate him with progress and development. They overlook Mahathir’s many misdeeds.

The young, and many of the rural people, gaze upon the Petronas Twin Towers and swell with pride.

They associate Mahathir with modernity and credit him for making Malaysia worthy of international respect. Never mind that he is linked with the same crony capitalism and authoritarian rule that we associate with Najib.

Whether Mahathir leaves or stays Umno-Baru is of little consequence to the ordinary Malaysian. What you think about 21st Century Malaysia is more important. It is time for us to learn to think for ourselves and make demands on our leaders.

The Malays must wean themselves off Umno-Baru. The party does not protect the Malays. Nor is it true that it defends Islam.

Malaysians who are disillusioned with Umno-Baru need to consider the following when making up their mind about a party or a public figure.

Is the party in touch with the ordinary Malaysian? The administration, which consists mostly of Umno-Baru politicians, does not appear to give a hoot to Malaysian public opinion. The leaders are elitist. We don’t need leaders who tell us to wake up before dawn so that we can avoid traffic jams when we travel to work on roads without tolls.

Does the rakyat have confidence in the government? Where does one begin? Crime is soaring, but the IGP appears to be more busy on Twitter than with fighting crime. The idea of importing 1.5 million Bangladeshi workers fills many Malaysians with dread. There are already about four million migrant workers in the country, if we include the illegals.

Does Najib’s government inspire you? Few are impressed by the conflicting statements on the RM2.6 billion donation. Were we impressed with the press conferences in the wake of the disappearance of MH370? Are we inspired by the cancellation of student scholarships or the use of the Sedition Act to silence critics of the government?

No, Mahathir’s exit from Umno-Baru does not matter much. What matters most is how you think the country should be led and managed in the future.

Mariam Mokhtar is an FMT columnist

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 9:06 am and is filed under
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Feud With Najib Leaves Former Premier `Not Proud’ of Malaysia

Haslinda Amin

Bloomberg

March 2, 2016

Former Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad has lost pride in the country he governed for more than two decades, warning political tensions that have surrounded Prime Minister Najib Razak for months could hand a fractured opposition victory at the next election.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mahathir, 90, renewed his months long calls for the premier to step aside, saying Malaysia under Najib’s seven-year tenure had morphed from a stable, calm country where the economy was growing to a place that lacked tolerance.

“There was a time when I go abroad, people talk highly of Malaysia,” Mahathir said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 25. “Today, if we go abroad, we meet people, what they say is that ‘hey, what’s happening to your country?’ That’s what they say. And I am not proud because I can’t explain what’s happening in the country.”

The feud between Mahathir and Najib has grown increasingly acrimonious in recent months, with Mahathir attacking Najib over a series of financial scandals and his economic record, and quitting the ruling party. Mahathir is under investigation for potential defamation and had another visit from police last week.

While his influence has faded in recent years, the public sparring creates risk for the United Malays National Organisation, which has ruled since independence in 1957 but whose broader Barisan Nasional coalition won the last election in 2013 with its slimmest margin yet.

Their dispute reflects a broader concern about a sense of drift in Malaysia: While an investigation into $681 million that authorities said was a personal donation in 2013 from the Saudi Arabian royal family to Najib has largely wrapped up, several probes continue into the finances of debt-ridden state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., whose advisory board Najib chairs.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that hundreds of millions of dollars also went into Najib’s accounts in 2011 and 2012. A 1MDB spokesman said the company has consistently maintained it hadn’t paid any funds to the personal accounts of the prime minister.

Weakened Opposition

The various affairs have raised fresh questions over transparency and doing business in Malaysia, dented markets and helped spur a 21 percent slump in approved investment last year, all at a time economic growth is slowing.

Najib has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying he and Mahathir disagreed over economic policies and that no “individual, however eminent” should try to interfere with or hijack his leadership. He retains the backing of the bulk of UMNO’s powerful divisional chiefs and the opposition remains weak, its coalition having imploded after then-leader Anwar Ibrahim — a one-time deputy to Mahathir –was sent to jail again last year on a sodomy conviction, a charge he denies.

Still, Mahathir said voters are worried enough to switch support from UMNO, while state institutions including the police and the Attorney-General’s Office are being undermined by Najib’s actions after the revelation of the money in his accounts. Najib shouldn’t have accepted the funds as no leader “should have that kind of money,” he said.

“When we talk to people, they are disgusted with the government,” Mahathir said. “On my blog, they say the same thing. They all feel this is a bad government where it doesn’t do anything that is good for the country, that it undermines the system.”

Attorney General Mohamed Apandi Ali in January closed the door on the graft investigation into Najib, clearing him of wrongdoing. The premier returned $620 million in August 2013 that was not utilized, Apandi said. He did not specify what the rest of the funds were used for.

“Any prime minister who has $681 million with him is not doing something right,” Mahathir said from his office on the 86th floor of the world’s tallest twin towers. “Even if it is given to him by a foreigner, you still don’t accept.”

Mahathir led Malaysia from 1981 to 2003, a period when the economy grew an average 6.3 percent annually. He was famous for rejecting an International Monetary Fund bailout for Malaysia during the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, instead introducing capital controls and pegging the ringgit.

He advocated a moderate brand of Islam and stressed modernization but had little tolerance for dissent and used sedition laws to curb it. He was a vocal critic of U.S. policy in the Middle East and its invasion of Iraq while he was in power. Najib’s predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi stepped down in 2009 as his popularity within UMNO faded, fueled in part by resignation calls from Mahathir.

Sidelining Detractors

“During my time, we had problems of course, political problems,” Mahathir said. “But now what we are seeing is that, if anybody says anything against Najib, that is almost a crime.”

Najib is sidelining detractors as he cements his grip on UMNO: the Supreme Council suspended party Deputy President Muhyiddin Yassin on Friday for undermining UMNO in his quest to remove the premier from office, weeks after Najib’s allies maneuvered the ouster of Mahathir’s son — another critic — as chief minister of a northern state.

Mahathir said there is little way to tell how much public support he has. Divisional chiefs are “keeping quiet because they have to support the prime minister.” At the general level, “lots of people come up to me and say ‘we support you’ but that’s what they say. But they are also scared to be heard saying they support me.”

Mahathir said voters were angry over rising costs from transportation to food as the government removes subsidies and after the implementation of a goods and services tax last year.

“The cost of living has gone up because of GST,” said Mahathir. “Toll rates have gone up, the minimum wage has gone up, which means the cost of doing business, the cost of production has gone up.”

Najib has moved since 2013 to shore up his main support among rural-based Malays, giving bigger cash handouts to lower-income households to help them cope with rising costs. Mahathir disagrees with the cash handouts program.

“I attribute many of the problems faced today to Dato Seri Najib and his policies,” Mahathir said. The negative perception surrounding Najib will cost UMNO votes even with a splintered opposition, he said, while declining to name anyone he thought could replace Najib. The next election is due by 2018.

“If you don’t support Barisan Nasional, obviously the opposition will win by default,” he said. “Even if the opposition is in disarray.”

“This animosity toward Najib is such, their dislike for the policies that he has, if he is removed, I think the country will be able to recover,” Mahathir said.

“The country is resilient because of the quality of the people who built up this country, it’s not because of Najib.”

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 5:38 pm and is filed under
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Is Malaysia Sliding Toward Dictatorship?

By Prashanth Parameswaran

The Diplomat

March 01, 2016

A look at how the rhetoric compares to reality.

Last week, Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad grabbed headlines when he suggested that the country was heading towards becoming a dictatorship like North Korea under its current premier Najib Razak.

And as I reported over the weekend, Najib’s former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin also warned that the country was witnessing “the collapse of democratic institutions and the emergence of a new dictatorship.” Muhyiddin was sacked last year after criticizing Najib amid the 1MDB scandal, a high-profile corruption saga where the premier has been accused of mismanaging funds linked to debt-ridden state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The aforementioned statements are no doubt heavily politicized and hyperbolic. But just how close are they to reality?

While Malaysia has at times received praise for being a moderate Muslim democracy, close observers have long recognized that this is far from the case. In the first iteration of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index released in 2006, before Najib even assumed power three years later, Malaysia was already classified as a “flawed democracy”, with the country ranking 81 among 167 countries (the other three types are “full democracies”, “hybrid regimes” and “authoritarian regimes”). It is also worth noting that Mahathir, now one of Najib’s fiercest critics, was himself responsible for the same anti-democratic transgressions he now fumes about, including weakening the country’s institutions and suppressing dissent, most famously in the case of his then deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Similarly, Freedom House has also consistently characterized Malaysia as “partly free” (somewhere in between the other two categories, “free” and “not free”, where countries like North Korea is situated), both in an overall sense and with respect to its two indicators – political rights and civil liberties.

Lastly, in the Polity Index, which examines qualities of democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions by examining executive recruitment, constraints on executive authority, and political competition, Malaysia is listed as a “democracy,” one step below “full democracy” (other categories are “open anocracy”; “closed anocracy”, and “autocracy”). It is worth noting Malaysia’s score up till 2013 is listed consistently as a 6, which means it barely makes the “democracy” category (scores 6 to 9) and just misses the “open anocracy” one (scores 1 to 5). An anocracy characterizes a regime type with qualities of political instability and ineffectiveness and a mix of democratic and autocratic traits – or, more loosely speaking, ‘part democracy and part dictatorship.’

While the question of what Malaysia is and how it fares generally speaking is quite easy to resolve, the claim that the country is sliding towards dictatorship is much more difficult. The claim itself overly broad one relative to the specific metrics used in each of these indexes. Furthermore, the full impact of Najib government’s crackdown following the 1MDB scandal has not been captured by the data that we have thus far even though it is clearly evident, whether through the suspension of media outlets reporting on the scandal, the undermining of institutions involved in investigating it, or the arrest of whistleblowers seeking to spill the beans. Nor are all instances of democratic regression necessarily directly linked to the 1MDB scandal either. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and the National Security Council bill are two examples which suggest that viewing the country’s democratic troubles through the lens of the scandal alone is rather myopic, with other trends like the rise of the Islamic State threat also serving as contributing rationales irrespective of their validity.

Nonetheless, there is some support for this anti-democratic slide. For instance, Malaysia’s overall score on EIU’s Democracy Index did drop from 6.49 to 6.43 from 2014 to 2015, largely because the country did worse on two key sub-indicators – civil liberties and the functioning of government. On civil liberties, Malaysia’s score went from 5.88 to 5.59. But the main noticeable change was on the functioning of government sub-indicator, which measures things such as accountability, checks and balances, transparency and corruption. Here, Malaysia went from 7.86 to 6.79, more than a point decrease, which makes sense because the 1MDB scandal would affect many aspects of this sub-indicator.

This is also reflected in Freedom House’s data, though that index is more focused on rights and freedoms relative to EIU’s. While Malaysia has recorded the same score of 4 (with 1 representing the most free conditions and 7 being the least free in each of the two dimensions measured: political rights and civil liberties) over the past few years, Freedom House has also designated Malaysia as a country with a “downward trend” in each of the last three years because of changes within sub-indicators.

In the latest rankings in Freedom of the World 2016, Malaysia was also listed among the ten countries to watch because of Najib’s pressure over the 1MDB scandal. Freedom House makes an explicit link between the corruption scandal and the erosion of civil liberties as well as a crackdown on political dissent.

“In response, Najib’s government has ramped up repression, purging opponents and using draconian laws to silence critics,” the group said. “Meanwhile, authorities have launched a campaign to enforce conservative societal norms, targeting religious minorities, women, transgender Malaysians, and the LGBT community more generally.”

So while Malaysia is a far cry from North Korea and its anti-democratic turn is hardly a descent into dictatorship, the country’s slide nonetheless a discernable and worrying one.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 8:34 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia’s Institutions Come Unraveled

by Joshua Kurlantzick

Asia Unbound

Council on Foreign Relations

March 1, 2016

On Saturday, as the Diplomat reported, Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, released a statement on Facebook warning that the country was slipping into dictatorship. Yassin lashed out against Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak for overseeing this reversal from democracy. “In the face of public outrage at his leadership, Najib is using all the power that he has to suppress the voice of the opposition and silence his critics,” warned Yassin. “We are really witnessing the collapse of democratic institutions and the emergence of a new dictatorship.”

This was not new criticism by Yassin, but it was probably his harshest attack on the prime minister to date. Najib sacked Muhyiddin Yassin last year, after earlier revelations in the 1MDB scandal reportedly prompted Yassin to call for Najib to step down. Yassin’s political career has been on a downward spiral ever since. Last week, already stripped of his Cabinet position, Yassin was also suspended as the deputy president of UMNO, the main party in the governing coalition.

Yassin’s statement echoed a similar one released by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad last week. Mahathir, who has been harshly criticizing Najib for more than a year over allegations of widespread graft by Najib and his family members, last week blasted Najib’s leadership once more. Mahathir, like Yassin, claimed that the prime minister was leading Malaysia into a dictatorship, toward becoming a country little different from Asia’s most authoritarian regimes.

Over the past year, Mahathir, who has never seemed able to stomach any of his successors, and the current prime minister have battled publicly, and through proxies. Najib reportedly arranged for an intraparty putsch that ousted Mahathir’s son as chief minister of Kedah state in early February. Some Malaysian reports suggest that the Malaysian authorities are also probing members of Mahathir’s family’s business dealings, and Malaysian police are investigating Mahathir for allegations of slander related to some of his blog postings. Although it still seems unlikely that police will pursue a case that could wind up with the ninety-year-old Mahathir in jail, the investigation serves as a further warning of Najib’s desire to maintain total control over his party. Earlier this week, facing pressure on so many fronts, Mahathir resigned from the ruling party.

Certainly, neither Mahathir nor Yassin is an ideal messenger to warn of threats to Malaysian freedom. Mahathir memorably sacked his then-deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998 after Anwar clashed with the prime minister over monetary policy and over the need for greater freedoms within the ruling party and in Malaysia in general. Mahathir then continued to dominate government as the authorities pursued a highly dubious case against Anwar for sodomy. (The governments of Najib and predecessor Abdullah Badawi would pursue a second, equally dubious case against Anwar a decade later.)

But the criticisms delivered by Mahathir and Yassin hit home. Over the past two years, Malaysia under Najib has shifted from a hybrid regime in which a relatively vibrant civil society coexisted with a moderately repressive government toward outright authoritarianism. Within the governing coalition, Najib and his allies have virtually eliminated dissenters. The government also has undercut the independence of vital institutions ranging from the office of the Attorney General to the central bank. Legislation making it easier to criminalize dissent, and Anwar’s jailing in the second sodomy case, has decimated the opposition coalition, a disparate group of parties that needed Anwar’s experience and magnetism to hold the alliance together.

The government has tried to suspend or block access to independent Malaysian media outlets, and Malaysian courts have even upheld the government’s ban on T-shirts worn by the Bersih civil society group; the government claims that the shirts are a threat to national security. With Mahathir leaving the party, and likely to launch more attacks on Najib, the country’s backsliding could get worse — quickly.

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 5:52 am and is filed under
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Upshot from Azalina’s bizarre and gibberish statements – will PAC investigate  whether Attorney-General Chambers had drafted a charge sheet against Najib for corruption in May last year and whether it will summon leading members of Special Task Force on 1MDB to testify?

I am quite fascinated by the two  bizarre and gibberish statements issued by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, viz:

•	statement on Saturday, 27th February 2016 in immediate response to Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s Facebook posting that before he was sacked as Deputy Prime Minister in July last year, he was briefed by the then Attorney-General, Tan Sri Gani Patail about the deposits from the state-owned SRC International into Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal bank accounts and informed that a crime had been committed by Najib; and

•	statement yesterday, 1st March 2016, replying to my statement on Sunday, 28th February 2016 commenting on the “two extraodinary statements” by both Muhyiddin and Azalina.

I am not interested in getting into a polemics with Azalina but prefer to  deal with the substantive issues thrown up, intentionally or otherwise,  by the bizarre and gibberish statements by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department which called for follow-up action at least on two fronts.

Firstly, whether the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) investigating in to the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal will probe whether the Attorney-General’s Chambers had drafted a charge sheet against Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak for corruption in connection with the RM42 million SRC International scandal, whether work on this  charge sheet for corruption against Najib went back to May last year and the final outcome of this charge sheet.

I had noted in my Sunday statement that Azalina, in mentioning about “a charge sheet said to be drawn up in May” last Saturday, had disclosed  for the first time about the time origin of such a “charge sheet” and I had asked whether she had received the necessary official clearance to declassify such an information or whether she is guilty of breach of the Official Secrets Act for  divulging such an information in the public domain.

Azalina gave a most bizarre and gibberish response yesterday, stating:  “The idea that he was unaware of this is unacceptable given that, on July 30, 2015, Sarawak Report uploaded what it claimed was a draft charge sheet of a corruption charge against the Prime Minister in relation to SRC International Sdn Bhd, a former subsidiary of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), even though the investigation into this affair was only completed in December 2015.”

Azalina’s statement is bizarre and gibberish because she did not quote source and/or proof that the charge sheet of Najib’s corruption was drawn up in May 2015 and this information is already in the public domain.

I am prepared to give Azalina another chance to quote source and/or proof that such information about the charge sheet drawn up in May had been made in the public domain before Azalina’s statement on Saturday.

Access to Sarawak Report was blocked by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on July 19, with the announcement by the MCMC that access would be blocked “until the Special Task Force looking into 1MDB completed its investigations”.

This brings us to the second issue focussed by Azalina’s bizarre and gibberish statements (although this would be the last of her intention) as to  the present status and actual role of the  Special Task Force on 1MDB, which had made a special impact in the early period when it issued press statements signed by Tan Sri Abdul Gani, then Attorney-General, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Chief Commissioner Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamad and the Bank Negara governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

Will the PAC summon the leading members of the Special Task Force to testify as to the role of the various agencies which had constituted the Special Task Force on 1MDB and the actual outcome and achievements of the Special Task Force?

I believe Malaysians are quite intrigued by Azalina’s first statement on Saturday when she accused Muhyiddin of being involved in a high-level conspiracy to topple the Prime Minister because the then Deputy Prime Minister had been briefed by the then Attorney-General that the Prime Minister Najib had  committed corruption wrongdoing in the RM42 million SRC International scandal.

Azalina had said: “The fact that a sitting Attorney General was privately briefing and sharing classified legal information with Tan Sri Muhyiddin, a member of Cabinet and UMNO member who clearly had vested interests, is not only unethical but also a breach of the Official Secrets Act.”

What should Gani as Attorney-General have done in the circumstances if he had  grounds to come to the conclusion that the Prime Minister had committed a corruption offence in the RM42 million SRC International scandal?

If Azalina thinks that it is wrong, improper and unethical for Gani to have briefed the Muhyiddin as Deputy Prime Minister, what should Gani have done?

Was it wrong, improper and unethical for Najib to sack Gani as Attorney-General beliving that Gani had reasons to believe that the Prime Minister had committed a corruption offence and should be charged in court, and to appoint Tan Sri Mohamad Apandi Ali as Attorney-General to exonerate him of any criminal wrongdoing?

Finally, is it wrong, improper and unethical for Azalina to defend the Cabinet “purges” which resulted in her being appointed into the Cabinet to be one of Najib’s  foremost propagandists and defenders? Isn’t there a conflict of interest?

                This entry was posted on Wednesday, 2 March 2016, 2:35 pm and is filed under
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Breaking our silence

Lyana Khairuddin

The Malaysian Insider

2 March 2016

It has been quite a week for all of us affiliated with The Malaysian Insider.

The outpouring of support from the public only amplified the debate on our freedom of expression and access to information. It appears that Malaysians collectively need to stand up for our rights, to be empowered by information and be allowed critical thought process rather than continue to be infantilised by the powers that be.

Further, the decision to block a whole website over one article seems an over exaggeration. The impact is an oppressive silencing of many diverse Malaysian voices that is allowed a platform through this portal.

We are now forced to be outsiders, yet our concerns and voices remain Malaysian.

Coincidentally, I recently finished reading the book by G25 Malaysia, “Breaking the Silence: Voices of Moderation, Islam in a Constitutional Democracy” as my book of the month for February.

As a student of science, I admit that my knowledge of our country’s laws is minimal. Further, my religious education was restricted to a public school curriculum supplemented by Quranic lessons with my late grandfather.

However, living in Malaysia today necessitates the need to navigate the intersection of a secular constitutional democracy with Islamic knowledge.

For this reason alone, I recommend that this book be a must-read for all Malaysians.

Divided into three parts, “Part I” makes up the bulk of the book. It included the discussions by legal experts on the discrepancies found between the Civil and Shariah Laws, in line with the main objective of G25’s open letter back in December 2014.

It dispels my former understanding that both these laws are equals, when in truth Shariah laws are still bound to the Constitution as the supreme law of Malaysia. This misrepresentation comes from my personal lived reality of being faced with dual jeopardy as a Muslim in Malaysia and from recent civil court cases that further confounds the powers of these two laws.

I am inclined to agree with Prof Shad Saleem Faruqi’s essay that there is a silent rewriting of our Federal Constitution.

This calls for a need to include knowledge on the history and formation of Malaysia, the Federal Constitution, the Rukun Negara and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement in our school curriculum.

Such academic discourse must not be restricted to memorising and regurgitating facts. Instead, to include discussions on the impact of such drafts in our current lived realities.

In my opinion, this would empower generations of Malaysians and allow an intellectually mature cohort of voters who subsequently will demand for good governance.

I quote Tan Sri Mohd Sheriff Mohd Kassim in his essay, “In mature democracies Parliament plays a strong role not only as an institution which enacts laws but where parliamentarians can exercise their control over the government.”

Lest we forget, without mature voters, we are bereft of a mature parliament; thus leading to the mess that we are currently in.

“Part II” and “Part III” included essays from socio-political activists on the current impact of Islamisation in Malaysia.

As Muslims, we should all strive for a life that encompasses the universal Islamic values of justice, equality, equity, dignity and love and compassion. I believe that such values are strong foundations for any exemplary society.

While these Islamic values formed the Islamisation policy under the Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad administration, today the consequences are dire.

Instead of inculcating these values, we now see Islamic bureaucracies that are hell bent on controlling every superficial aspect of Islam – from the way Muslims dress to the food we eat, as well as what will or will not confuse us.

Worse, Islam is often used as an excuse to silent, to oppress and to exclude. These discourses are academically presented in these two parts of the book.

Shazal Yusof Zain quoted Al-Farabi in his essay, where “Al-Farabi envisioned a virtuous society (city) would emerge when the rules of a just government are established by human reason and laws exist to protect the rights of the individual.

“Such a society would cause ‘people from outside to flock to it’ and this would lead to a ‘most desirable kind of racial mixture and cultural diversity’ which would guarantee the flourishing of talented individuals and enterprise, something that sounds remarkably similar to what the founding fathers of Malaysia envisioned for our country when they drafted the Federal Constitution.”

I cannot agree more. Reading this book by G25 had me purchasing and perusing a copy of our Federal Constitution. It has also spurred me to read more extensively on my religion. I realise that such Islamic values can be lived in a secular Constitutional democracy. Further, we may even prosper and progress under such a democracy.

Increasing the powers of the Shariah court would only be redundant to laws that have already included the universal Islamic values of justice and upholding human rights as drafted in the Federal Constitution.

What we need now is to raise our collective voice to uphold these laws, reject the hijacking of Islam and to strife for a Malaysia that is just, inclusive and progressive.

We must begin, by breaking our silence. – March 2, 2016.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 8:59 am and is filed under
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Cat out of the bag why PAC meeting of Feb. 24/25 postponed – for AG to think of ways to suppress Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB?

The cat seems to be out of the bag as to why the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Feb. 24 and 25 were summarily postponed in the last minute although there were three times the requisite PAC quorum of three available for the two scheduled PAC meetings last month, with the cock-and-bull story about some PAC members out of the country?

The clue is to be found in the Malay Mail Online scoop today that the Auditor-General’s final 1MDB audit report has been classified under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1972, and that PAC members will not be allowed to take home the 300-page report on the controversial state investment fund when it is tabled at the PAC tomorrow.

Was the last-minute postponement of the PAC meeting on Feb. 24 and 25 to give Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s henchmen in the Executive, in particular the new Attorney-General, time to think of ways to suppress the Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB?

This is downright ridiculous and a clear and gross violation of parliamentary powers and  jurisdiction by the Executive branch of government and shows the insufferably arrogant attitude by some members of the Executive who think that they are the only patriots in the country, although they are responsible for the international opprobrium and odium suffered by the country on the world stage as a nation which is increasingly corrupt, repressive and authoritarian!

It is no business of any member of the Executive, whether Attorney-General or Prime Minister to decide that PAC members are not trustworthy and reliable enough to be allowed to  take home  the 300-page Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB, for once the Auditor-General has presented the final audit report on the 1MDB, the report falls under the jurisdiction of Parliament and neither the Auditor-General nor any member of the Executive (whether Attorney-General or Prime Minister) can or should  interfere to decide that the Report should not leave the four walls of Parliament House.

Is the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB so explosive, inflammable or so subversive that if it leaves the four walls of Parliament, it could create a national security situation?

Or is the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB so damnably damaging that the Najib  governments wants it to be kept under lock-and-key, and not made available to the public?

This is most ridiculous, as if the Najib government has not made enough of a fool of itself and the country in the eyes of the world as a result of Najib’s sorry and protracted twin mega scandals for the past year.

Only today, Malaysians suffered the mortifying experience of being lectured by the Indonesian daily, the Jakarta Post, on the twin subjects of democracy and corruption – first time (at the rate things are going, not the last time) Indonesia teaching Malaysia what are the best practices in democracy and fighting corruption!

What a responsible, independent and patriotic PAC should do in the present circumstances is to immediately present both the Auditor-General’s interim and final audit report on 1MDB to Parliament on its first working sitting on Tuesday, 8th March 2016 with the explanatory statement that the PAC report on the 1MDB, taking into account the Auditor-General’s interim and final reports, would be tabled in Parliament by 31st March  2016 (the end of the fourth week of the March/April  Parliamentary meeting) so as to allow a full debate by Parliament on the PAC report on the last two days of the fifth week of Parliament on 6th and 7th April.

Dare the PAC at its meeting tomorrow deplore and censure  Executive interference with Parliament, which is inimical to the doctrine of the separation of powers among the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary –  one of the most important checks-and-balances to ensure the success and maturing of functioning and meaningful parliamentary democracy?

Parliament has its own powers to protect the confidentiality of parliamentary papers, as breach of parliamentary privilege could entail not only fines but periods of imprisonment as well – and the OSA should cease to apply and there should an end to any Executive interference with Parliamentary independence with regard to any documents presented in Parliament.

Parliament must be jealous to protect its own powers, dignity and jurisdiction and not to allow the Executive to  intrude or interfere whether through the use of OSA or other devices.

Not much is to be expected of a “cari makan” Chairman of PAC, but will the Parliament Speaker protect the dignity, privileges and powers of Parliament from Executive interference?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 12:24 pm and is filed under
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Corruption Allegations Continue to Build Against Malaysia’s Prime Minister

Nash Jenkins

Time

3rd March 2015

Najib Razak is accused of siphoning more than a billion dollars from a struggling state fund

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak continues to dismiss allegations that he embezzled funds from a struggling state development fund, even after new evidence reportedly links upwards of a billion dollars in deposits from the fund into his personal accounts.

Najib has been the subject of unprecedented controversy since last July, when the Wall Street Journal and investigative news website Sarawak Report published documents tracing nearly $700 million from the ledgers of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) to Najib’s private bank accounts. On Monday, the Journal reported that antigraft investigators believed the sum in Najib’s accounts was in fact higher than initially stated — totaling more than $1 billion.

Najib’s office released a statement in response to the article, condemning the Journal as a “willing vehicle for certain political actors who are seeking to damage the Prime Minister and Malaysia for personal gain,” but not commenting directly on the matter of the finances.

The accusations of further impropriety come just over a month after Malaysia’s Attorney General announced that an internal investigation into 1MDB had cleared Najib of any wrongdoing, concluding that the hundreds of millions of dollars in the Prime Minister’s accounts were not from 1MDB — which Najib launched as a pet project in 2009, and which has consistently reported debts — but instead campaign donations from the Saudi royal family. Meanwhile, a series of overseas investigations into the Malaysian money trail, including one initiated by the F.B.I., are still pending.

The recent allegations have reignited popular hostility towards Najib in Malaysia, where in late August hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur to demand his resignation. On Wednesday, a faction of student activists from across the Southeast Asian nation released a statement condemning the Prime Minister, whose actions, they wrote, “have jeopardized and will sacrifice the future of Malaysia.” Myriad political figures, including former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, have joined in this chorus.

Wong Chen, a Malaysian parliamentarian who belongs to the country’s growing opposition coalition, said that Najib’s refusal to specifically disprove the allegations against him could be interpreted as a tacit admission of guilt.

“If the Prime Minister disputes the WSJ’s claims, he must take legal action against WSJ to clear his name. So far Najib has not even issued any statement on this allegation. This is astounding, maintaining silence is not helping improve his tarnished image or popularity,” Wong Chen wrote in an email to TIME on Wednesday afternoon.

“This being the case, most Malaysians will assume the story to be true. Most Malaysians have resigned to the fact that corruption is a systemic problem but the quantum of the 1MDB allegations has shocked everyone.”

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 9:14 am and is filed under
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From saving nation from Dr M, to saving it with Dr M

Malaysiakini

3.3.2016

COMMENT
  “Mahathir wants me dead but I pray that Mahathir will live to 100 years to see the decline and end of Mahathirism.”

Little did Lim Kit Siang know at the time that Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s influence would dwindle within the next three years of him uttering those words.

Fast backward, prior to the last general election, the 75-year-old DAP stalwart was furious because the 90-year-old former premier wanted the voters in Gelang Patah to put Lim’s political career in a coffin.

Lim said Mahathir’s “kubur” (grave) remark elicited a “rapturous response” from then deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin who declared “I was ‘trapped’ in Gelang Patah and that I was ‘finished’ politically.”

There was not the only thing which ruffled his feathers.

Mahathir had also warned that Lim, should he be elected, would bring conflict and antagonism among the races, especially between the Chinese and the Malays.

“When Lim decided to contest in Chinese-majority Gelang Patah, it is because he wanted the Chinese there and in Johor to reject working together and sharing with the Malays.

“An unhealthy racial confrontation would replace Sino-Malay cooperation which has made Malaysia stable and prosperous.

“That cooperation would end when Kit Siang wins Gelang Patah,” he said.

But now, it appears that Mahathir and Lim – having won Gelang Patah – are willing to bury the decades-long hatchet and work together to save the nation from Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

Prior to this, Lim had spent most of his political career attempting to save Malaysia from Mahathir while the latter was dead set on saving Malaysia from the former.

For example, in a blog posting in 2012, Lim responded to Mahathir on the reasons for BN’s dismal performance in the 2008 polls under the stewardship of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

“The reason why Abdullah suffered the worst Umno/BN electoral defeat in the 2008 general election is because he failed to live up to his promise in the landslide 2004 general election victory to begin the serious task to dismantle the Mahathirish legacy of corruption, cronyism, and abuses of power.

“Recently, Mahathir has resurrected the worst strains of Mahathirism viz rabid racism, to the curses of corruption, cronyism and abuses of power, when he stoked racial fears among the Malays with his warnings that Malays will lose power if Umno loses the next general election, that Najib is a weak prime minister and that reforms could spark unrest, that the 13GE will be about race and that the Chinese voters are the kingmakers for the 13GE and will decide who forms the government – exhortations which are not only untrue, most incendiary, and highly provocative, but totally against five decades of Malaysian nation-building, his own Vision 2020 of Bangsa Malaysia, and Najib’s 1Malaysia concept.”

In December 2014, Lim lamented that instead of showing a benign and constructive influence in Malaysian life and politics, Mahathir had become an “evil influence”.

“Mahathir is not in retirement but is hyper-active in speaking engagements to continue his fear-mongering, incitement of hate, and spreading of lies,” Lim thundered.

But then again this is politics, and in the words of Mahathir himself, there are no permanent friends nor foes. Alliances change, according to common interests.

Furthermore, politicians do suffer from amnesiac spells.

Indeed, the recent meeting between Mahathir and Lim “to find a solution to the national cul de sac” shows that politics is really the art of the possible.

Tomorrow, Mahathir is expected to ink a joint declaration with a gaggle of opposition leaders, some of whom had suffered the brunt of Mahathirism.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 9:42 pm and is filed under
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Malaysia Broadens Media Crackdown As Political Scandal Worsens

By Mong Palatino

The Diplomat

March 02, 2016

Internet freedom suffers as Najib’s embattled government tries to fight off the deepening 1MDB scandal.

Since last month, the Malaysian government has blocked three news websites and three socio-political blogs. Meanwhile, the police have threatened Internet users who will share satirical clown memes of Prime Minister Najib Razak.

These reports are troubling and somewhat ironic considering the fact that the government’s Multimedia Super Corridor program supposedly guarantees Internet freedom. Yet those who are familiar with the corruption scandal involving Najib and its massive political impact will immediately recognize these acts as a desperate attempt to silence critical voices that can mobilize public opinion against the ruling party.

Despite being cleared of committing any wrongdoing by the attorney general, Najib is still hounded by accusations that he received illegal fund transfers from 1MDB, a state-run investment firm. Najib admitted that he has $600 million in his personal bank accounts but he claimed the money was a political donation from a royal family in the Middle East. The scandal sparked intense protests across Malaysia and some of Najib’s allies even called for his resignation. Though Najib remains the head of the ruling coalition, his credibility has been tainted.

It would not be a stretch to suggest that the suspension of some newspapers last year and the recent censoring of news websites and blogs are part of the machinations of Najib’s faction to stop the further spread of information concerning the corruption scandal.

Both the Medium and Asia Sentinel news websites were blocked in Malaysia for reposting an article from Sarawak Report about the graft charges against Najib. Meanwhile, The Malaysian Insider was banned last week for allegedly publishing an ‘unverified’ report about the corruption probe involving the prime minister. According to the Center for Independent Journalism, the blogs OutSyed The Box, Din Turtle and Minaq Jingo Fotopages were blocked for being critical of the government.

Even social media users were targeted by authorities. Earlier this month, the police warned an activist graphic artist that he is already being monitored for posting a tweet containing a clown image of Najib. The artist is campaigning for the repeal of the archaic Sedition Act, which continues to be used by the government to harass opposition leaders and dissenters. The threat backfired because the artist gained many supporters and Najib’s clown memes were widely shared on various social media pages. The hashtag #kitasemuapenghasut, which means “we are all seditious” in the local Malay language, became a popular rallying call.

The decision of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to order the blocking of several websites despite the absence of a court intervention could inspire media groups to revive the campaign for the amendment of the Communications and Multimedia Act of 1998. Parliament is scheduled to review this law next month. Some analysts think it is about time to clip the broad powers of the media agency, which acts as juror and executioner in enforcing the law.

But it’s not just the law that needs some tweaking; the views of leaders about the role of Internet in society needs to be understood as well.

A day after the blocking of The Malaysian Insider, Najib wrote on his blog about maximizing the cyberspace for the ‘greater good.’

“Keyboard warriors, cyber troopers, and even news portals have made the online world their ‘playground’, constructing their own version of ‘reality’ with click bait headlines that serve their own agendas. This is an unhealthy practice of journalism,” he wrote.

Was he referring to the blocked news websites that published reports about the 1MDB corruption issue?

“The battle of perception will be a continuous one. The internet is an open space for the voices of the people. But it is up to us to stay true to the path of moderation and not fall prey to misconstrued agenda by irresponsible users,” he added.

Najib is certainly right in reminding his readers that the Internet is “a powerful tool that can both shape and dismantle a society.”

Perhaps someone should tell the tech-savvy leader that the Internet can also expose terrible secrets of corrupt politicians and oppressive governments. And even if Internet regulation is necessary in some instances, Internet censorship is never acceptable especially if the aim is to hide the truth and prevent the people from speaking about it. After all, isn’t the search for truth part of the so-called greater good that Najib referred to?

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 3:54 am and is filed under
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Malaysia’s US$1 billion question

– Jakarta Post

The Malaysian Insider

3 March 2016

In a desperate attempt to unseat his former “golden boy” Datuk Seri Najib Razak from the premiership, former Malaysian leader Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced his resignation from the ruling Umno on Monday.

His move, however, will hardly impact Najib, because Dr Mahathir cannot deny that he was also, at least partly, responsible for the current political landscape. The resignation looks more like personal revenge against Najib because of his failure to abide by his former mentor’s instructions.

There are growing protests from civil society groups against alleged power abuses and rampant corrupt practices involving political elites and the ruling coalition government.

But the opposition is divided and even hostile within itself, while the government silences the disgruntled groups using the tactics of wealth and power distribution.

The Wall Street Journal dropped another political bombshell on Malaysia when it reported on Monday that Najib has US$1 billion in his bank accounts, US$319 million more than what the newspaper allegedly found in July last year.

By any standard, such a significant graft allegation is ridiculous and will damage the pride of Malaysia as a nation if the truth is not thoroughly disclosed to sceptical Malaysians.

Reuters quoted the paper as citing two unnamed people familiar with flows into Najib’s accounts and a person familiar with one overseas investigation, who said that more than US$1 billion was deposited from 2011 to 2013, far more than the US$681 million earlier identified.

The paper said global investigators believe much of the US$1 billion originated from the state fund known as 1MDB, but did not specify where the extra money came from or what happened to it. The government insisted last year that the money was a donation from the Saudi royal family and had been returned.

So far, Najib is still able to tame the protests and opposition because although many Malays, the country’s first-class citizens according to the constitution, are frustrated by the political situation, they are facing greater threats domestically from ethnic Chinese and Indians.

For Indonesians, who have embraced democracy since 1998, the way Najib explained the source of the money seemed unacceptable. It is hard for them to understand Malaysia’s situation, too.

Indonesia is definitely ready to share its democratic experience with neighbouring Malaysia. Of course graft is still plaguing Indonesia, but democracy makes it easier for acts of corruption to be publicly exposed. Hopefully Malaysia will not feel offended by this friendly advice. – Jakarta Post, March 3, 2016.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 10:11 am and is filed under
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The attitude  “case closed” with regard to Najib’s twin mega scandals must be debunked and demolished when Parliament reconvenes next Monday

UMNO leaders and operatives are now adopting the attitude of  “case closed” with regard to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s twin mega scandals. This attitude  must be debunked and demolished when Parliament reconvenes next Monday.

Najib’s RM55 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion (or is it RM4.2 billion) “donation” twin mega scandals are not only NOT  over and resolved, as Najib happily announced in his 2016 New Year Message, but they have become even bigger and more monstrous scandals  with the expose of  many new facets and angles, both inside and outside the country, in the past two months.

In fact, with Najib’s twin mega scandals  now increasingly intertwined, one question foremost in the minds of concerned and patriotic Malaysians is whether the RM55 billion 1MDB scandal and the RM2.6 billion (now mushroomed to RM4.2 billion) “donation” scandal are actually part of one big monstrous financial scandal.

UMNO leaders and operatives might have thought that the new Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamad Apandi Ali’s  “exculpation” of Najib of any corruption or criminal wrongdoing would be the final word on the Najib mega scandals, but the revelation by former Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin that he had been briefed by the then Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail about Najib’s corruption and criminal act in the RM42 million SRC International scandal before his sacking as Deputy Prime Minister on 28th July 2015 had completely  changed the picture by  re-opening a can of worms in the very bosom of the Najib administration.

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said, had foolishly corroborated in the re-opening of the twin mega scandals  when she divulged that the Attorney-General’s Chambers had drafted a charge sheet against Najib for corruption as far back as May last year – an information which had  never been disclosed in the public domain until Azalina’s statement.

In the circumstances, how can UMNO leaders and operatives, in particular Ministers, keep up the pretence of “case closed” when Parliament reconvenes and Najib’s twin mega scandals return as the top items of the parliamentary agenda?

Following Muhyiddin and Azalina’s revelations about the former Attorney-General’s briefing to the then Deputy Prime Minister about Prime Minister Najib’s corruption wrongdoing and that the charge sheet on corruption against Najib had gone as far  back as May last year, the only right and proper thing for a honest, responsible and trustworthy government to do is to commission an independent Royal Commission of Inquiry into Najib’s twin  mega scandals and ascertain what had transpired during the course of inquiry into the scandals, in particular the cause  in the  sudden appearance and sudden disappearance of the Special Task Force on the twin mega scandals.

With a “cari makan” character for the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman in the person of Datuk Hasan Arifin, nobody has much confidence that the PAC would be able to play any positive role in getting to the root of the twin mega scandals.

Hasan has said that the PAC would meet tomorrow and on Monday for the Auditor-General to present his final audit report on the 1MDB.

He has conspicuously avoided my question whether he has received assurance that there would be 100% attendance of PAC members at the PAC meetings tomorrow and on Monday, for this was the reason why he had unilaterally and arbitrarily postponed the PAC meetings scheduled for Feb. 24 and 25.

How could Hasan reconcile with the reasons for his unilateral and arbitrary postponement of PAC meetings on Feb. 24 and 25 on the ground that there would be no 100% attendance if he cannot state that he had been assured of 100% PAC attendance tomorrow and on Monday?

Furthermore, Hasan owes a responsibility to Parliament and the nation to disclose who were the PAC members who went overseas causing the sabotage of the PAC meetings of Feb. 24 and 25, and what disciplinary actions would be taken against such errant MPs who had clearly breached parliamentary privileges for such miscreant parliamentary conduct.

                This entry was posted on Thursday, 3 March 2016, 5:47 am and is filed under
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Malaysia laughing stock of all foreign offices in the world with the infantile and moronic justification that TMI banned to maintain peace, stability and harmony

Malaysia is the laughing stock of all foreign offices in the world with the infantile and  moronic justification by the Malaysian Foreign Ministry that the news portal The Malaysian Insider had to be banned to maintain peace, stability and harmony in the country to safeguard the multi-racial and multi-cultural values, norms and practices in Malaysia.

Wisma Putra’s response to  United States’ concern about the move to restrict  access to domestic and international  reporting on Malaysian current affairs and the call by the US State Department spokesman John Kirby to the Malaysian government to ensure that its laws respected freedom of expression including the free flow of ideas on the Internet is one of the most asinine statements ever issued in the name of the Malaysian government in the nation’s 48-year history.

Has the intellectual depth and breadth of the “Mandarins” in the Malaysian civil service  become so scarce and shallow that such a statement could pass muster as to be released in the name of the Malaysian government?

What has happened to the Malaysian Governments’ 20-year  Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Bill of Guarantees especially on “No Internet Censorship”?

Are all the ten guarantees in the MSC  Bill of Guarantees  now to be regarded as no better than a worthless scrap of paper?

Even more important, does Wisma Putra really believe in the garbage it has trotted out that the ban on The Malaysian Insider was necessary “to maintain peace, stability and harmony to safeguard the multi-racial and multi-cultural values, norms and practices in Malaysia”?

Malaysians would like to know who are the Ministers in the Cabinet who believe in such garbage?

When has zeal,  fervour and passion to combat corruption and financial scandals like Najib’s twin mega scandals undermined or threatened “peace, stability and harmony in the country” or inimical to the “multi-racial and multi-cultural values, norms and practices” in Malaysia?

The contrary is in fact the case, as all the great religions, cultures and civilisations which find a confluence in Malaysia place a high premium on the values and ethos of clean, honest, ethical and incorruptible living.

I have strong differences with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak but I do not believe that he has become so intellectually bankrupt as to believe in the garbage dished out by Wisma Putra to justify the banning of The Malaysian Insider, which is another international disgrace for Malaysia.

The Prime Minister has asked Internet users to differentiate truth from lies before  forming a judgment – but the violation of the MSC Bill of Guarantee of “No Internet Censorhip” and the ban on Internet news portals  are not helping Malaysians to differentiate truth from lies, as they only sought to hide the truth from the Malaysian citizenry.

Najib’s Ministers are ectastic that the Prime Minister’s visit to Saudi Arabia is a success, claiming that if the RM2.6 billion political donation  was fraudulent, the Saudi royal household should be enraged with Najib instead of giving him VVIP treatment.

Such an argument does not wash. Even more pertinent is the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on March 1 that deposits into Najib’s personal bank accounts totalled more than US$1billion and not just US$681 million (RM2.6 billion) as earlier alleged.

Quoting “two people familiar with flows into his (Najib’s) accounts and a person familiar with one overseas probe”, WSJ reported that “most money beyond the previously identified $681 million arrived in 2011 and 2012”.

WSJ also claimed that most of the US$1 billion originated from 1MDB, and not from Saudi Arabia.

WSJ also reported that “according to those familiar with their probes”,  “the international investigators have found no evidence any of this (US$681 million deposited into Najib’s accounts) came from Saudi Arabia”.

What is significant is that Najib has not dared to sue Wall Street Journal for all the past and the latest allegations about the gargantum sums of money deposited into his personal bank accounts.

The Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamad Apandi Ali said in January that Najib had returned RM2.03 billion  out of the RM2.6 billion to the purported “Saudi royal family” donor several months after receiving the money as the sum was not used.

Now that the allegation has mushroomed from RM2.6 billion to RM4.2 billion, what has Apandi Ali got to say and what amount of unused money had actually been returned to Saudi Arabia by Najib?  And where are the documentary proofs of the return of such sums of money?

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As Najib Razak digs in, disillusion among Malaysians grows

Economist

Mar 5th 2016 | KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysia’s scandals – The art of survival

ONLY standing room is left at the civic hall in Petaling Jaya in the western suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. Inside 1,000-odd middle-class Malaysians have gathered to consider the fallout from a corruption scandal that has buffeted the country since July. “The whole world is laughing at us,” says a retiree watching from the back rows.

At the heart of the scandal are hundreds of millions of dollars that for unclear reasons entered bank accounts belonging to the prime minister, Najib Razak. You might think such a revelation would unseat Mr Najib and spell ruin for his United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which has held power since independence. Instead, Mr Najib appears to have strengthened his grip, by purging critics within the cabinet and police. On February 29th the grand old man of Malaysian politics, Mahathir Mohamad, stormed out of the party in disgust. Dr Mahathir was prime minister for 22 years until 2003 and was once a fan of Mr Najib. No more.

Across the country, dissidents are feeling nervous. Last year at least 15 people, mostly dissenters in politics and civil society, were charged under a noxious colonial-era sedition law that Mr Najib had once promised to repeal. In late February authorities blocked one of Malaysia’s most popular news websites hours after it reported that not all Malaysia’s graft-busters are convinced that the prime minister has committed no crime. A new anti-terror law entitles the prime minister to nominate broad “security zones” in which police powers may be extended — a handy tool for crushing protests, critics say. The attorney-general is mulling stiffer sentences, including caning, for people who leak government secrets.

It has all appalled many urban and professional Malaysians. It has also made stars of the government’s most vocal critics. At the forum in Petaling Jaya, fans seeking selfies crowd around Tony Pua, an opposition MP whom police have banned from leaving the country; at dinner afterwards people at neighbouring tables insist on paying for his meal.

Malaysia is “essentially two countries”, says Ben Suffian, a pollster. Outrage is widespread in the cities, with growing numbers of young, liberal ethnic-Malays as well as most of the ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian minorities who make up about a third the population. It is rarer in UMNO’s rural heartlands, where apathy is rife and where the party is trusted to defend racial laws designed to give the ethnic-Malay majority a leg-up.

Over the decades this rural voter base has helped keep UMNO in power. Indeed party leaders have been more concerned to protect themselves from challenges from within UMNO. Loyalty is prized over ability, while patronage and convoluted party rules discourage upstarts. Mr Najib has been playing the system more ruthlessly than many imagined. Recent sackings of subordinates have sent a signal about who is boss.

It is surely a relief to UMNO that Malaysia’s opposition has mostly bungled its chance to make hay from the affair. It had formed a loose coalition of three parties, reliant on an unlikely peace between two of them, a secular ethnic-Chinese outfit and a devout Malay-Muslim one. The opposition won the popular vote in a general election in 2013 but fell short of the number of seats required to take power because of gerrymandered constituencies. Yet rather than regroup and build momentum for the election that is due by 2018, it has been consumed by bickering. When tens of thousands of Malaysians rallied last August to demand Mr Najib’s resignation, they did so not under the banner of any political party but at the request of Bersih, an unaligned group that has long campaigned for clean politics and electoral reform.

Rock solid, or rocky?

Some people assert that Mr Najib’s hold may be shakier than it appears. Even in the countryside, worries about the economy have made the prime minister unpopular. Low oil prices have damaged Petronas, the state oil firm, slashing the amount of money the government can pour into development projects. A new sales tax has increased prices for many everyday items, while a slump in Malaysia’s currency, the ringgit, which has fallen by more than a fifth in the past 18 months, has put many imports out of reach. It all helps make some poorer Malays more susceptible to populists painting ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian Malaysians as rent-seeking interlopers. But a new suspicion is growing among ordinary Malaysians that goings-on in Kuala Lumpur are affecting their own pocket books.

As for the party, rivals whom Mr Najib has vanquished may yet bounce back. Dr Mahathir, who has long called for Mr Najib to step down, is scheduled to attend an unusual forum of grandees and politicos from across the political spectrum who are meeting in private later this month to discuss alternatives to Mr Najib. Wan Saiful Wan Jan, of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs in Kuala Lumpur, says that some UMNO bigwigs are backing the prime minister through gritted teeth. He says that a time may come when they say that enough is enough, especially when the party starts considering its strategy for the next election. Perhaps Mr Najib may risk calling a snap election before then, both to pre-empt conspiracy and to catch out the opposition before it can patch up its differences.

For Malaysia’s rattled liberals, all this seems theoretical. Last year they watched plans evaporate for a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. They are doubtful that the current corruption scandal will ever unseat Mr Najib.

Back at the civic hall in Petaling Jaya, the mood darkens as the evening wears on. Microphones passed around the floor reveal frustration and anger. One person insists that the opposition draw up a list of government officials who should face trial if the opposition takes power. A second, shaking with rage, frets that the opposition has “no chance” of winning the next poll. This is no time to give up hope, Ambiga Sreenevasan, a prominent lawyer, tells the crowd. Once the crisis is over, she says, “we must make sure this never happens to our country again.”

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Follow the money, if you can

Economist

Mar 5th 2016 | KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysia’s 1MDB affair – Investigators in several countries are trying to get to the bottom of Malaysia’s growing corruption scandal

IT WAS a striking move from a country better known for hiding iffy foreign wealth than for exposing it. Frustrated by a lack of co-operation from Malaysian counterparts, Switzerland’s attorney-general declared in late January that there were “serious indications” that $4 billion had gone astray from Malaysian state concerns, some of it into accounts held by current or former Malaysian and Middle Eastern officials. The announcement fuelled an already combustible scandal that has transfixed Malaysians, battered their prime minister, Najib Razak, and could yet ensnare banks around the world.

The allegations of misappropriation centre on a Malaysian state investment fund, from which it is suspected that large sums were siphoned by businessmen and officials with links to Mr Najib. It is thought that some of this was used to help his party win an election in 2013; some was spent on buying assets at questionable prices; and some of the remainder was moved to offshore shell companies and bank accounts. All those suspected of involvement, including Mr Najib, deny wrongdoing. None has been charged with a crime.

The affair spans the globe. Caught up in it are not only Malaysian officials and moneymen but also several big banks and perhaps Saudi royalty. The money trail leads from Malaysia to Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, Abu Dhabi, Switzerland, the Caribbean and New York. Authorities are investigating in Switzerland, America, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. They face a daunting challenge in piecing together such a complex case, a task made harder by operators’ widespread use of opaque offshore vehicles.

The story’s institutional protagonist is 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). It was originally a regional development fund for Terengganu, an oil-rich Malaysian state, but in 2009 the country’s finance ministry took it over and rebranded it. Mr Najib heads the ministry, as well as being prime minister. The plan was for the fund to suck in investment through tie-ups with foreign firms. Mr Najib chairs 1MDB’s board of advisers.

1MDB got most of its financing by raising debt. A series of bond issues pushed its borrowings up to $11 billion. By 2014 questions were multiplying about its financial health, spurred by the fact that it had had three audit firms in five years. A flurry of investigations in the media drew on leaked documents. 1MDB denies wrongdoing.

Malaysian investigators concluded that deposits into a bank account held in Mr Najib’s name came through banks and companies linked to 1MDB. They found that a firm that was once part of 1MDB and is now controlled by the finance ministry, SRC International, paid $13m into the account in 2014-15. The attorney-general, Mohamed Apandi Ali, has said that there is no evidence that Mr Najib was aware of the payment. (We all overlook items on our bank statements.)

More eye-catching was an earlier payment into Mr Najib’s account, of $681m, from a shell company. This was made only weeks before the general election in 2013, which Mr Najib won narrowly. Some say it was linked to 1MDB. The official explanation is that it was a legal donation from an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family. Mr Najib has denied ever taking public money for personal gain. 1MDB says it has not paid any funds into the prime minister’s personal accounts.

On March 1st the Wall Street Journal reported that investigators in two countries, whom it didn’t identify, believe that more than $1 billion in total flowed into Mr Najib’s personal accounts, much of it originating from 1MDB. These investigators, it is alleged, reckon that the payments were, in part, routed through a company linked to — or made to look as if it was linked to — a venture involving 1MDB and Middle Eastern interests.

1MDB had various dealings with an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign fund called IPIC which guaranteed some of 1MDB’s bonds. The dealings included a tie-up with Aabar Investments PJS, an IPIC subsidiary. 1MDB transferred more than $1 billion to what appeared to be a division of Aabar. Yet investigations allegedly suggest the money in fact went to a firm based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) with an almost identical name to the Abu Dhabi concern.

This transaction seems not to have been recorded on the books of Aabar’s parent, IPIC. (1MDB says it stands by its own accounts, which show the payment.) The suspicion is that financial sleight-of-hand may have been used to pass off the transfers as legitimate payments between corporate partners. Investigators believe much of this money ended up in Mr Najib’s accounts after being routed through a second company in the BVI, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.

IPIC is reported to be looking into what happened to the money paid out by 1MDB but not booked as coming into the Abu Dhabi fund. Aabar denies wrongdoing.

Also in the spotlight is a joint venture between 1MDB and PetroSaudi, an oil firm. 1MDB injected $1 billion into the venture. Two-thirds of this was moved to a Seychelles-based firm shortly afterwards, according to a draft report by Malaysia’s auditor-general. 1MDB later sold its interest in the venture, using some of the $2.3 billion raised to invest in a Cayman-based vehicle. 1MDB then reportedly sacked its auditor, KPMG, after the firm expressed concern over the identity and financial standing of the vehicle’s owners. 1MDB asserts that all the Cayman money is accounted for. PetroSaudi has denied doing anything wrong.

Investigators are also looking into who drove 1MDB’s complex transactions. Assuming it is genuine, correspondence obtained by Sarawak Report, an investigative website, appears to show that a key figure in the fund’s dealings with PetroSaudi was a Malaysian financier, Low Taek Jho, a family friend of Mr Najib. Mr Low reportedly also helped direct some election spending for Mr Najib’s ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional. 1MDB and Mr Low have insisted he merely advised the fund, unpaid. He denies wrongdoing.

Banks, too, face awkward questions. Several global banks handled large payments that are under scrutiny, among them arms of JPMorgan Chase and Royal Bank of Scotland. One question is whether there were grounds for the banks to suspect that any of the transactions were questionable — or whether especially rigorous checks on public officials and other “politically exposed persons”, or PEPs, were called for and carried out.

The role played by Goldman Sachs is also notable. The investment bank led 1MDB’s main bond issues, earning unusually high fees on them (Goldman has said this is because it temporarily held the risk on its own balance-sheet). Goldman’s chairman for South-East Asia, Tim Leissner, grew close to Malaysia’s elite. Last year Goldman put him on leave and now says he has left the firm.

Mr Najib’s response to the scandal has been to swipe at his critics. Muhyiddin Yassin, a deputy prime minister who wanted investigations stepped up, was sacked from the cabinet last year, and the attorney-general was replaced — supposedly on health grounds, though Sarawak Report has published documents appearing to show that charges were about to be brought against Mr Najib.

On February 27th Mr Muhyiddin called for the prime minister to resign, saying the outgoing attorney-general had shown him “proof” that Mr Najib acted criminally in connection with 1MDB. The government said this was part of a “politically motivated conspiracy” to topple Mr Najib.

The new attorney-general, Mr Apandi, has moved swiftly to exonerate Mr Najib, closing a probe into the $681m “donation” and asserting that it had nothing to do with 1MDB. The government says that most of the money was sent back to the donor after the election. Why, some ask, was so much of the payment returned if it was legal?

Not all Malaysia’s institutions have been supine. Last year the central bank urged the attorney-general to begin a criminal prosecution of 1MDB managers after concluding that the fund had moved $1.8 billion overseas based on inaccurate disclosures. This money was supposed to go to the PetroSaudi joint venture and related loans. Instead, much of it went elsewhere and is unaccounted for, according to the auditor-general’s draft report. (The final report was supposed to be released last December, but has twice been delayed.) The central bank requested a review of the finding by Mr Apandi that 1MDB did not commit any offences. This was rejected.

Malaysia’s anti-corruption commission, an independent agency, investigated the payments into Mr Najib’s account and handed its findings to Mr Apandi late last year. He returned them to the commission in January, requesting more information. The commission has denied reports, based on unauthorised briefings, that it recommended charging Mr Najib.

It was the haste with which Mr Apandi ruled out criminality that prompted the sharper tone from the Swiss authorities, who are investigating suspected bribery, corruption, misconduct in public office and money-laundering linked to 1MDB. They appear to be unimpressed with the blanket exoneration, though they say Mr Najib is not a suspect.

Through a brass plate, darkly

Singapore is also investigating suspected money-laundering and says it has frozen a “large number” of bank accounts. The case is a test of the city-state’s resolve in dealing with financial crime. Like Hong Kong, it has seen big inflows of wealth in recent years, including money of dubious provenance from Switzerland.

But the sleuths face many hurdles. The corporate secrecy offered by offshore centres makes the task of penetrating structures used to move money slow and difficult. The OECD and others have begun to try to lift this shroud, but transparency reforms are at an early stage.

Then there is the complex and clunky international system of “mutual legal assistance”, or MLA, under which countries ask each other for help in investigations. Piecing together the jigsaw is all the harder if the country at the centre of the probe is unhelpful. Malaysia has said it will assist the Swiss, but that looks unlikely. Indeed, it is using blocking tactics, for instance by telling Switzerland to file its MLA request through Malaysia’s foreign ministry. That is unusual: such requests would more typically go through the justice ministry, which is viewed abroad as less political.

Malaysian officials reacted angrily to Switzerland’s announcement about misappropriation, accusing it of spreading “misinformation”. When the Swiss and Malaysian attorneys-general met last year, the Malaysians are believed to have said they would arrange for those caught up in the affair to provide testimony in depositions, but this has not happened. Without Malaysian help, it will be hard for foreign sleuths to complete their probes. For now, though, they seem determined to keep digging, causing anxiety in the Malaysian capital, parts of the Middle East, and some of the world’s largest financial centres.

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Hasan Arifin should move a motion in name of PAC to censure the Executive for classification of Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB under Official Secrets Act as a contempt of Parliament and breach of parliamentary privilege

The Chairman of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Datuk Hasan Arifin should move a motion in the name of PAC in Parliament which reconvenes on Monday to censure the Executive for classification of Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB under the Official Secrets Act as a contempt of Parliament and breach of parliamentary privilege.

The reason which had been given for the classification of the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB is not only unacceptable, it has never been done before as far as the Auditor-General’s reports were concerned.

For instance, the Auditor-General’s interim report on 1MDB which was presented to PAC in July was never classified under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

Why is it necessary to  classify the Auditor-General’s final audit report on 1MDB under OSA, a contempt of Parliament which must be challenged by MPs at the first available opportunity, i.e. on Tuesday on March 8.

Surely, PAC is  not barred from presenting the Auditor-General’s final audit report to Parliament or has the Auditor-General’s final audit report have to be excluded in whastever PAC report on the 1MDB to be tabled in Parliament.

The Auditor-General’s final audit report is an classified official secrets with the department so long s it had not been presented to PAC, but once presented to the PAC, the OSA classification ceases to apply as the final audit report is now parliamentary property and any leak involved a breach of parliamentary privilege and it should no more come under the OSA.

I do not believe that Auditor-General wants his final audit report on 1MDB to be classified under the OSA, just as he had not classified his earlier interim report on 1MDB under the OSA.

Let MPs and Malaysians be informed as to who in government who want the Auditor-Generl’s final audit report to be classified under the OSA, even after it has been presented to the PAC.

Is it the Attorney-General, Tan Sri Mohd Apandi Ali or the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, himself.

Let Najib come out forthright whether he agrees that the Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB should continue to be under OSA even after presentation to tne PAC?

Here we see the Executive intruding and trespassing into the province and jurisdiction which should be exclusive preserves of Parliament.

This must be deplored by all MPs in the strongest possible terms, at the first available opportunity, which is why the first item of business of the March/April Parliament on Tuesday must be to  censure such Executive abuses of power interfering,  intruding  and trespassing into exclusive parliamentary jurisdictions.

The classification of the Auditor-General’s final audit report on the 1MDB to the PAC is  also against all principles and precepts of accountability, transparency and good governance.

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Lines finally drawn in fight for Malaysia

COMMENTARY BY JAHABAR SADIQ, EDITOR

The Malaysian Insider

4 March 2016

It took Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to force the issue for all Malaysians. He drew a line in the sand today, asking friends and foes to make up their minds once and for all.

Get on his side to “Save Malaysia” from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s government or be the enemy and part of the Najib Party – the ones defending the status quo as much as Dr Mahathir did when sacking Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim 18 years ago.

Anwar has signed up to support his mentor-turned-nemesis’s efforts. So has Lim Kit Siang and the DAP, Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali and the PKR gang, and activists such as Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan and Maria Chin Abdullah.

A total of 58 prominent Malaysians signed Dr Mahathir’s Citizens’ Declaration today. The only ones missing are those from PAS.

Obviously, they have either decided to remain neutral or their absence is an implicit support for Najib.

Over the next few days and weeks and months, perhaps more will sign up to show their support for Dr Mahathir and gang – united by a common cause rather than a genuine alliance of hearts and minds.

The final number before the core group calls it a success will be interesting.

What happens after that, the legal and permissible ways explored to unseat a sitting prime minister, will be a fascinating experience for Malaysia.

True to form, Putrajaya has dismissed this grand alliance of mainly past and some present leaders. It says Malaysia is a democracy and the only way to change a government is through the ballot box.

“Today, Tun Mahathir and his former enemies have demonstrated the depth of their political opportunism and desperation.

“There is an existing mechanism to change the government and prime minister. It’s called a general election. And it is the only mechanism that is lawful, democratic and fulfils the people’s will.

“In 2013, the Malaysian people expressed their will and elected the current government, led by prime minister Najib Razak. If Tun Mahathir wants to change the government, he must follow democratic process and await the next election, in line with Malaysia’s laws and Federal Constitution,” a government spokesman said.

Yes, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government has forgotten what had happened in Perak in 2009 when three lawmakers crossed the aisle and instead of a snap election, it won the state by getting a show of support from its lawmakers and the rebels.

Or for that matter, how Umno changes menteri besars in Terengganu and Kedah recently just by a simple show of disloyalty to the incumbent.

But the lines are drawn now. Dr Mahathir and his friends against Najib and his core supporters in Umno, BN and perhaps some from PAS.

It might actually take a general election to see who will win this battle, and the nearest is as early as 2018. But will the winners get to save Malaysia, and from what?

And what has happened to Malaysia’s youth? Will they let their ageing politicians drive the agendas of both sides or actually come forward and work to reform the structural issues that have led to a leadership that has yet to account for itself.

That really is the question that needs a quick answer.

The future does not belong to a winner from both sides of the lines drawn today. It belongs to Malaysians who want a government that is accountable for its actions, not one that does not walk its own talk. – March 4, 2016.

* Jahabar Sadiq runs The Malaysian Insider.

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