Khairy’s post-14GE mea culpa that 1MDB scandal was the cause of UMNO/BN’s “catastrophic” downfall in the 14GE too little and too late

UMNO Youth leader Khairy Jamaluddin’s mea culpa in the South China Morning Post that the 1MDB scandal was the cause of UMNO/BN’s “catastrophic” downfall in the 14th General Election is too little and too late.

It however validated the indictments and condemnations that I had made of the various national leaders and institutions both in the run-up to and during the short 11-day campaign of the 14th General Elections.

When the 13th Parliament was dissolved on 7th April 2018, I said in Ayer Hitam that I had not felt so ashamed as a MP in the 13th Parliament although I had been a Member of Parliament for 10 terms from 1969 to 2018, except for the tenth Parliament from 1999 to 2004, spanning 45 years from 1969.

In the 13th Parliament, I was suspended twice, and for six months each, basically because I demanded answers and accountability over the 1MDB scandal and why Malaysia became known as a global kleptocracy during the tenure of the 13th Parliament.

In the last six parliamentary sittings, I became a parliamentary “ghost”, as the Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia and his two Deputy Speakers could not see me, although I attended Parliament diligently every day and sat near to them, but I could not participate in the parliamentary debates nor my votes counted in any parliamentary voting.

This is what I said in Ayer Hitam on 7th April, 2018:

“I call on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the Parliament Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia to apologise to all Malaysians for the 13th Parliament’s failure to do anything to clear or purge Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy.

“The 13th Parliament not only did not do anything to clear or purge Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy, it ignored and subverted the fundamental doctrine of the separation of powers and allowed Parliament to be a rubber stamp of the Executive, not only to suppress questions and debates on the 1MDB scandal, it became a partner in the political crime of enacting the Anti-Fake News legislation to try to save Najib from the full consequences of the 1MDB scandal.

“Can the nation expect a fulsome apology from Najib and Pandikar for the failure of the 13th Parliament to clear or purge Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity off being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy?”

In fact, in a media statement of April 10, I was moved to ask: What has the Parliament Speaker, Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia, the Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Mohd Hashim Abdullah and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Tan Sri Dzulkiflif Ahmad have in common?

My Answer: Their inability to justify their decisions and actions.

The Election Commission Chairman illustrated an example that day, when he announced the nomination and polling dates for the 14th General Election, but refused to field questions from journalists and exited the media conference in double-quick time despite repeated shouts of “Tan Sri! Tan Sri!” to get his attention.

Mohd Hashim could not explain the rationale why the Election Commission decided to affix a Wednesday for Polling Day, if it was mindful of the Constitutional provision to act in a manner which enable it to enjoy “public confidence” and the constitutional mandate to conduct free, fair and honest elections.

It was such a joke when the chief of Election Commission teamed up with the Chief Commissioner of Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to announce a joint Ops Centre to handle complaints related to election violations in the 14th General Election, as the credibility of the MACC was not very much higher than the Election Commission.

This had been proven correct by subsequent events – witness the 72 bags confiscated by the Police a week after the 14GE from three units in Pavilion Residences - 35 of which contained cash in 26 different currencies amounting to RM114 million.

Surprisingly, UMNO veteran Tan Sri Shahrir Abdul Samad claimed yesterday that the RM114 million cash were UMNO general election funds. (This raises the questions as to how Shahrir knew they were UMNO monies and how much UMNO had spent in the entire 14th GE).

I commented at the time that the MACC can never recover its reputation and credibility so long as it maintains a blind-eye to the greatest corruption in the nation’s history and the largest kleptocracy in the world – the international multi-billion ringgit 1MDB money-laundering scandal which had turned Malaysia into a global kleptocracy in the last three years.

At the Iskandar Puteri Nomination Centre in Skudai on April 28, 2018, I summed up the objectives of the 14th General Election in three words: “Set Malaysia Free” – from 1MDB, global kleptocracy, corruption, abuses of power, injustices and all forms of exploitation.

During the election campaign, I had challenged the 730-odd UMNO/BN parliamentary and state assembly candidates to declare whether they want full investigations into the international 1MDB money-laundering scandal, which spans the globe, causing Malaysia the ignominy, infamy and iniquity of a global kleptocray.

But as Khairy has now admitted, there was not even a bleat from anyone of the 730-odd UMNO/BN candidates about the evil and monstrosity of the 1MDB scandal.

Najib believed that he could get away from full accounting for the 1MDB scdndal in the 14th general election, by obsfucasting and virtually censoring detailed examination and debate of what the US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had described as “kleptocracy at its worst”.

It is fortunate that Malaysians regardless of race, religion, region or even politics had united to Save Malaysia to foil Najib’s conspiracy, or the 1MDB scandal would have become not only the “heist of the century”, but the biggest electoral fraud in Malaysian history.

What redemption over the 1MDB scandal is Khariy and the entire UMNO/BN coalition capable of performing in post-14GE.

Will he propose that the first item of business of the UMNO General Assembly which is to elect the new UMNO Supreme Council should be to demonstrate national UMNO contrition over the 1MDB scandal by adopting a resolution of apology to the nation not only for the 1MDB scandal but failure to purge Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity as a global kleptocracy?

Will all UMNO/BN MPs support a motion in Parliament calling for full investigation of the 1MDB scandal to cleanse or purge Malaysia of the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of the 1MDB scandal?