Securities Commission is the fifth casualty of the Azam-gate, losing all credibility and legitimacy – we must not allow more casualties of Azam-gate whether Parliament, Parliament Speaker, MoU, Parliamentary Select Committees, the Attorney-General or the Police!

Azam-gate has claimed another casualty – the Securities Commission - which has lost all credibility and legitimacy as the fifth victim after the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC); the MACC Chief Commissioner, Azam Baki; the Cabinet and the Prime Minister Ismail Sabri.

We must not allow more casualties of Azam-gate whether Parliament, Parliament Speaker, the confidence-supply-reform (CSR) memorandum of understanding (MoU), Parliamentary Select Committees, the Attorney-General or the Police!

The Cabinet yesterday had proved me right – that only an imbecile will regard the Securities Commission statement on a Thaipusam public holiday on Tuesday evening as fully clearing the MACC Chief Commissioner Azam Baki of any breach of the law and a declaration that Azam was therefore innocent.

The Ministers proved that they had done more than the proverbial three monkeys – ears that hear not, eyes that see not and mouths that speak not - by going one step further, to justify the simply unjustifiable!

Hence no immediate post-Cabinet announcement of what the Cabinet decided on Azam-gate, but more arm-twisting until a second Securities Commission statement was released at about 6 pm contradicting its statement 24 hours earlier from the SC “not able to conclusively establish that a breach under Section 25(4) SICDA has occurred” to “the SC arrived at the decision that was no breach” of Section 25(4) of SICDA 1991.

How the SC could perform a miracle within 24 hours to transition from “not able to conclusively establish a breach” to “arrived at the decision that there was no breach” is in a different realm altogether and need not tarry us here.

What should concern us is that Azam-gate has claimed another casualty in the ever-widening scandal, which has again made Malaysia the object of international odium and infamy.

One thing is absolutely clear – Azam Baki has lost all authority, legitimacy and credibility to be MACC Chief Commissioner as he cannot be the chief example of integrity and accountability in the public service!

Can Azam Baki be “whiter than white” on integrity and accountability after being enmeshed in Azam-gate?

The second Securities Commission statement has enmeshed Azam Baki in more scandals and controversies – like his own statement that his trading account was used by his brother to acquire shares in two companies in 2015 and that he had no interest in the matter.

I can imagine that Azam is going through tremendous pressure from the Azam-gate, but can Azam imagine the greater tremendous pressure that the MACC is undergoing at the same time?

If he loves MACC and wants the MACC to play its statutory role “to promote the integrity and accountability of public and private sector administration by constituting an independent and accountable anti-corruption body” (MACC Act 2009), he has only one option open to him – to resign or go on leave until the Azam-gate is fully investigated and he can continue to be a example of integrity and accountability in public and private sector administration and not to drag more agencies and institutions into public odium and infamy – national and international.

The Prime Minister has finally broken his silence on the Azam-gate when he said late last night that the opposition should accept the decision of the Securities Commission (SC), which cleared top graft-buster Azam Baki of any wrongdoing in his ownership of corporate shares.

Is Ismail Sabri so obtuse that he cannot see that the Securities Commission’s second statement had sparked more controversies undermining the integrity and accountability of more officials, agencies and institutions?

I have been asked whether the Azam Baki debacle would lead to the end of the confidence-supply- reform (CSR) Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Prime Minister Ismail Sabri and the four Pakatan Harapan leaders on Sept. 13, 2021.

Whether the CSR MoU should be ended before July 2022 should be based on whether the CSR MoU terms are being complied with and whether the Ismail Sabri government has crossed “red lines” to make it impossible for the continuation of the CSR MoU.

The CSR MoU is not an endorsement of the Perikatan Nasional Government which varies fundamentally from the vision of the Pakatan Harapan parties of PKR, DAP, Amanah and UPKO for a united Malaysia, the PH support of the nation-building principles embedded in the Malaysian Constitution 1963 and the Rukun Negara 1970 highlighting the need for a national consensus that Malaysia is a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation where there is no room for hegemony by any race or religion, the system of constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy which upholds the doctrine of separation of powers, the rule of law, spiritual and moral values as abhorring and eliminating corruption and abuses of power, respect for human rights, press freedom, good governance and an effective and efficient government.

The contents of the CSR MoU is a public document and there are no secret clauses.

If any party to the CSR MoU fails to comply with its terms, then either party is entitled to end the MoU.

For instance, I understand that the Ismail Sabri government does not want to comply with one of the important terms of the CSR MoU, and if so, this will trigger a situation where one of the parties will have to consider whether there is any purpose in continuing the MoU.

It has been said that there had been no CSR MoU for the first half-a-century of the nation and that Pakatan Harapan parties have ceased to be Opposition parties as they have been co-opted by the Ismail Sabri government.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

No CSR MoU was possible in the first half-a-century of the nation because Malaysia was under the rule of a political hegemon – UMNO – which increasingly became more high-handed, dictatorial, racialistic and corrupt over the decades until Malaysia suffered the international infamy with the 1MDB scandal which was described by a US Attorney-General at the time as “kleptocracy at its worst”.

Critics of the CSR MoU failed to realise that it is the historic decision of the 14th General Election on May 9, 2018 which ended the UMNO political hegemony which produced conditions for the CSR MoU.

It was because Ismail Sabri was the weakest Prime Minister in the nation’s history that produced the conditions that made the CSR MoU possible.

Of course, we should not become slaves of the CSR MoU.

Five conditions were among the factors which made the CSR MoU possible and necessary:

1. The end of UMNO political hegemony on May 9, 2018 where no single political party enjoys a simple majority in Parliament and which created a situation where CSR MOU was feasible. The MOU was unheard-of in the past six decades because UMNO exercised political hegemony.
2. The CSR MoU stopped the PH’s numbers of parliamentarians being used in the “Game of Thrones” of Government parties in the conspiracy to be Prime Minister, as whatever the combination and permutation, Anwar Ibrahim would not be named Prime Minister whether by PN or BN before the 15th GE.
3. The CSR MoU was to unite the efforts of all Malaysians to end the exponential increase of Covid-19 cases and deaths. There were 24,599 Covid-19 cases and 393 fatalities on August 26, 2021, five days after Ismail Sabri was sworn in as the ninth Prime Minister of Malaysia, If this exponential daily increase of Covid-19 cases and deaths had not been stopped, we might have cumulative totals of five to 10 million Covid-19 cases and 100,000 – 200,000 Covid-19 deaths at the end of 2021 instead of 2.75 million Covid-19 cases and 31,500 Covid-19 deaths on Dec. 31, 2021.
4. Pakatan Harapan insisted that the PN government allocate RM45 billion to help Malaysians affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
5. A minimal political consensus for the start of institutional and parliamentary reforms in the country.

It was agreed in the CSR MoU that there must be parliamentary reforms like the establishment of more parliamentary select committees and to amend the parliamentary standing orders to make the parliamentary select committees work meaningfully.

Azam-gate will be a test case for the CSR MoU whether the parliamentary special select committee on Agencies under the Prime Minister’s Department can function meaningfully.

I am in rare agreement with former Prime Minister, Najib Razak, who had brought Malaysia to the infamy of a kleptocracy, that we have received another fatal blow in our attempt to buck-up to achieve the status of a world-class great nation before Malaysia’s Centennial in 2063 – the decision of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from the US and Tsinghua University of China to choose Indonesia and not Malaysia to set up a joint university campus.

We seem to continue in the downward spiral to a kakistocracy after becoming a kleptocracy – as recently illustrated by the MIT-Tsinghua University decision, Azam-gate, the floods disaster and Malaysia’s poor performance in the two-year Covid-19 pandemic.

Are we heading to be a failed state in the next few decades?

What is the stand of UMNO, Bersatu and PAS on Azam-gate?