Najib has not only failed to clear his name, he has impaled himself on the 1MDB scandal

Former Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak has not only failed to clear his name but has instead impaled himself on the 1MDB scandal with his Reuters interview.

He said he shouldn't be blamed for the 1MDB scandal and declared that he knows nothing about money from 1MDB appearing in his personal account.

He claimed that his advisers and the management and board of 1MDB had wrongly kept the alleged embezzlement of funds a secret from him.

If so, he is the most incompetent head of government in the world!

I do not believe that Najib is so stupid, incompetent or ignorant, which only means he was lying through his teeth in his interview with Reuters.

Najib’s advisers, the management and board of 1MDB could not have kept the alleged embezzlement of funds a secret from him, for the simple reason that the facts and figures of such colossal embezzlement were all laid bare for everyone in Malaysia and the world to read in the 251-page kleptocratic litigation filed by United States Department of Justice (DoJ) between July 2016 and June 2017 to forfeit US$1.7 billion of 1MDB-linked assets from the US$4.5 billion 1MDB funds stolen and laundered through American banks.

This was why Malaysia suffered the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of a global kleptoctracy for everyone, whether inside or outside the country, knew about the criminality and moral turpitude of the 1MDB money-laundering scandal.

Far from an ignoramus who was being led to the slaughter house by his evil advisers, management and board of 1MDB, Najib was slaughtering everyone who dared to stand in his way to perpetrate what the United States Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had described as “kleptocracy at its worst” in global history!

And among the victims of such “slaughter”?

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission officers like Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed, Datuk Mohd Shukri Abdull, Datuk Seri Mustafa Ali, Datuk Bahri Mohamad Zin and Datuk Rohaizad Yaakob, and whistleblowers like Datuk Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan and Matthias Chang, and the entire institution of Parliament itself, with the former Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia forbidding questions and debate on the 1MDB scandal on the alien doctrine of sub judice of litigation in the United States, with me suspended from Parliament twice for six months each, and treated as a parliamentary ghost by the Speaker and Deputy Speakers who could not “see” me for the last six days of Parliament, although I attended Parliament diligently every day and was sitting in front of them.

But whether consciously or unconsciously, wittingly or unwittingly (infamous phrases used for previous Internal Security Act detentions), Najib had crossed the Rubicorn in the Reuters interview – crossing the line from denying that there is a 1MDB scandal to blaming his subordinates for not informing him about the embezzlement in the 1MDB scandal.

But such an act could not be so unconscious or unwitting, as after the historic and watershed 14th General Election on May 9, Najib had been withdrawing one legal suit after another, most of which are related to the 1MDB scandal.

It is clear that Najib afraid of a court-room expose of the 1MDB scandal – the same reason why Najib dared not follow up on his threat in July 2015 to sue the Wall Street Journal for the report on the RM2.6 billion donation in Najib’s personal banking account.

Is Najib paving the way for a strategic change of position – that the 1MDB scandal existed but he is not culpable or responsible for it as the fault lay elsewhere?

Before we examine in greater depth Najib’s astoundking interview with Reuters, Malaysians should give all the contenders for UMNO elections at the end of the month the opportunity as to0 whether they are going to own up to the 1MDB scandal, what positon they would take on the “kleptocracy at its worst” and who must bear responsibility for the 1MDB scandal which caused all Malaysians to suffer the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of a global kleptocracy for the past few years.

All Malaysians should study and dissect the most astonishing interview given by Najib on the 1MDB scandal with Reuters.

Lim Kit Siang DAP Parliamentary Leader & MP for Iskandar Puteri