KUALA LUMPUR, JULY 27: The debt-ridden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) has turned into the 1Malaysia Disaster Berhad, and all Malaysians must ask if a dragnet is being cast for all critics of 1MDB, a DAP senior leader today said.
(from left to right) DAP Johor chief Liew Chin Tong, Lim, Fong, Norazimah and Siti Sapura.
DAP Parliamentary Leader Lim Kit Siang said, “The question all discerning Malaysian should be asking is whether a plot is being hatched to launch as wide a dragnet as possible to implicate the maximum number of critics of the Prime Minister, Najib Razak and the biggest financial scandal in the country?”
The scandal-hit 1MDB has been at the centre of a financial storm, with allegations of embezzlement reaching up to the highest echelons of power, including Najib, who has been accused of receiving up to US$700 million from 1MDB into his personal bank accounts. It is also being probed by a high-level taskforce, the Auditor General’s (AG) Department, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, and the Public Accounts Committee.
Since then, Najib has remain conspicuously silent, only denying that he had used 1MDB funds for personal gain, and public pressure continues to mount for him to reveal the truth and make public the report from the AG Department.
Critics of the scandal have suffered the consequences, with newsportal Sarawak Report and business paper The Edge blocked, and suspended respectively. The reasons cited include ‘threats to parliamentary democracy’. Two MPs, Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua and Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli, have also been banned from travelling overseas.
Lim, who is also Gelang Patah MP, said this dragnet may sound far-fetched, but Malaysia is now undergoing dark times.
“Whether such a dragnet and ridiculous allegation of an international plot to topple the elected Prime Minister of Malaysia can stick or not may not be important, as the whole purpose of the exercise would be to buy time for the Najib administration, which appeared to be on its last legs, and to avoid an implosion in UMNO over the 1MDB scandal; especially Najib’s inability to say Yes or No to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report US$700 million had been deposited into his personal bank accounts just before the 13th General Election,” he told a press conference.
The scandal further spiraled into an international sensation when Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi said the ministry was considering extraditing Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown, for the ‘offence’ of foreign interference with Malaysia internal affairs.
Lim believed that the call for the extradition of Clare was the tell-tale sign of the government’s allegation that all this were an “international conspiracy” to overturn Najib’s leadership.
Lim also said he was shocked that Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had not a clear grasp on the truth of 1MDB scandal.
Muhyiddin at the Cheras UMNO annual general meeting last night said that he himself had to rely on the media to obtain information regarding the 1MDB scandal.
Muhyiddin also added that he had been chided by the other Cabinet Ministers just because he read the now-suspended business media The Edge to keep abreast with the progress of the scandal.
“What has our Cabinet degenerated into – a Cabinet of the Ignoramus?” said Lim.
Also present at the press conference was Bukit Bintang MP Fong Kui Lun and activists Norazimah Mohamad Nor and Siti Sapura Mohd Hashim, who officially joined DAP.
Norazimah, who is a businesswoman, said she was aided by Fong in 2000 when she and other fellow hawkers had a run-in with the Kuala Lumpur City Council (DBKL) officers for operating without a license. Both pledged their support to the party struggle.
– The Rocket
