Let Najib clarify in his UMNO Presidential Address at the UMNO General Assembly whether he is the first Malaysian Prime Minister to be investigated by the FBI as to whether he is a ‘kleptocrat’

Should Pakatan Harapan MPs from DAP, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara who have been in the forefront demanding full and satisfactory accountability from the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak for his twin mega scandals on RM2.6 billion “donation” and RM50 billion 1MDB go on their bended knees and thank their lucky stars that the Prime Minister was so merciful as to spare them the agony and shame of being exposed on the last day of the 25-day parliamentary meeting last Thursday (Dec. 3)?

This is because Najib said last night that the opposition spews nothing but “lies” on 1MDB (auta bukan fakta), declaring: “It they (the opposition) attack us using logic, rational thinking and facts, they will lose. It’s now the battle of the minds.”

If Najib is right, and the Prime Minister had appeared in Parliament on the last day of the budget parliamentary meeting on Dec. 3 to lay down the facts of the two scandals, all the Pakatan Harapan MPs who had been harping on them would have been mercilessly exposed as opportunists, charlatans and even ignoramus.

However, before deciding whether the Pakatan Harapan MPs should be thankful for such little mercies from Najib, they must ask why the Prime Minister was so kind to them, if it was true that it would be so easy for him to squash the Opposition MPs who had been raising a storm particularly since March about the 1MDB scandal?

If Najib could go for the jugular and sack his Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Rural and Regional Development, the Attorney-General; presided over a “nine day of madness in Putrajaya” where recalcitrant officers in the Attorney-General’s chambers, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Bank Negara and the Police were arrested, subject to immediate tranfers, or generally intimidated or brow-beaten; the work of the multi-agency Special Task Force on 1MDB sabotaged; the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC)’s continuing investigations into 1MDB derailed for three months until a pliant “cari makan” chairman of PAC had been appointed together with a six-month suspension from Parliament for me, why was the Prime Minister so “full of the milk of human kindness” as to spare Pakatan Harapan MPs the pain, agony and shame of being exposed as opportunists, charlatans and ignoramus on the 1MDB issue on the last day of Parliament last Thursday?

There could only be one answer: Najib was just bluffing with an empty hand, and he could not give any satisfactory answer to the some 90 questions which Pakatan Harapan MPs had submitted in the recent Parliamentary meeting related to Najib’s twin mega scandals – which resulted in the three-minute ignominy of Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi giving a Ministerial statement in Parliament that he could not give any answer!

Was it necessary for Zahid to make a Ministerial statement about his “non-statement” on Najib’s RM2.6 billion “donation” when a terse statement to that effect to the media would do?

According to Najib’s statement last night, we must ask whether Muhyiddin Yasin, Shafie Apdal and Gani Patail were also fascinated by “auta bukan fakta” over Najib’s twin mega scandals that they jeopardized their public careers as Deputy Prime Minister, Cabinet Minister and Attorney-General respectively?

Najib should not take the 30 million Malaysians as fools.

He should remember Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Najib may have in his pockets the 300 UMNO chieftains who dominate the UMNO Supreme Council and the UMNO Divisional leaderships but the battle ongoing all over the country is the battle between the 300 UMNO chieftains vs the 3 million UMNO members in the 21,000 UMNO branches.

Let Najib give full and satisfactory explanation of his RM2.6 billion “donation” and RM50 billion 1MDB scandals to the UMNO General Assemblies, and in particular, let Najib clarify in his UMNO Presidential Address at the UMNO General Assembly whether he is the first Malaysian Prime Minister to be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) as to whether he is a ‘kleptocrat’ under the US Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative 2010.

Would Najib be able to state categorically that he had verified with US President Barack Obama during the latter’s recent visit to Kuala Lumpur in connection with the ASEAN and Post-ASEAN Summits and that the US President had confirmed that the FBI and US DOJ are NOT investigating him as to whether he is a kleptocrat under the US Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative 2010?

Lim Kit Siang DAP Parliamentary Leader & MP for Gelang Patah