The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is depressed, complaining that the media had not been fair to him, giving as an example the news reports about Tabung Haji’s purchase of Tun Razak Exchange land from 1MDB on the last day of campaigning for the Permatang Pauh by-election which affected votes.
Either Najib has a short memory or he has again allowed his highly-paid “P.R. consultants” to mislead him, for the news story of Tabung Haji’s purchase of Tun Razak Exchange land broke too late on the social media on the last day of the Permatang Pauh by-election to have significant impact.
This is why all the post-Permatang Pauh by-election result analysis unanimously omitted reference to the impact of the story of the Tabung Haji purchase of TRX land, or Umno/Barisan Nasional would have lost by a shattering margin, with the PKR candidate Datuk Seri Dr. Wan Azizah Ismail winning with a majority ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 votes and not just 8,841 votes in the by-election.
I agree that Najib is entitled to fair treatment by the media but what is he doing to ensure that the Barisan Nasional-owned and controlled media, both print and online, are fair to Opposition leaders?
I have been accused all these years by Umno/BN owned and controlled media of being anti-Malay, anti-Islam, a chauvinist, a communist and responsible for the May 13, 1969 riots in Kuala Lumpur when I was not even in Kuala Lumpur from May 10 – 13, 1969 but in Kota Kinabalu in Sabah on May 13, 1969, and the DAP accused of wanting to achieve a Christian Malaysia – all of which are downright lies and falsehoods.
These lies and falsehoods have intensified especially during the six years of Najib’s premiership.
Will Umno/BN media start being fair to Opposition leaders?
Even more important, can Najib start by being fair to Malaysians, stop feinting, hiding and running in the past five years but to start answering all the questions about the RM42billion 1MDB scandal as he is the person, both in law and fact, who is the final approving authority of all 1MDB deals?
Last month, Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Ahmad Maslan announced that nation-wide roadshows to explain the 1MDB scandal and other government controversies would be launched at the state levels during the second week or Syawal.
Has Najib cancelled these roadshows because has is just unable to answer teeming questions which pile up by the day, like the three latest ones:
• When and why the Government had approved a further US$4.71 billion (RM17.8 billion) government guarantee for Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Corporation (IPIC) with regard to IPIC loans in the latest bailout of IMDB.
• A detailed and convincing rebuttal to the Wall Street Journal report of June 19, 2015 that 1MDB funds running into billions of ringgit had been used to bankroll his 13th General Election campaign through the artifice of 1MDB making overpriced purchase of power assets from Genting Group in 2012, paying RM2.3 billion or around five times for a power plant that was only worth RM400 million, with Genting make a subsequent donation to a foundation – Yayasan Rakyat 1Malaysia (YR1M), which lists Najib as chairperson on its website – for Najib’s 13GE campaigning purposes.
• Najib had assured UMNO division information chiefs and selected NGO representatives at Putra World Trade Centre on 14th June 2015 that the 1MDB controversy would be resolved by year end. Would Najib and the entire Cabinet resign if the 1MDB scandal and all-related 1MDB issues are not resolved within the next six months by 31st December 2015?
A month ago, I had composed “10 Questions on 1MDB for dummies” to help Cabinet Ministers and the Malaysian public understand the issues about the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, but up to now, none of these 10 Dummy questions have been satisfactorily answered.
Can Najib be fair to Malaysians by answering these 10 Questions on 1MDB for Dummies, like the following:
• Is 1MDB being wound down by next year and its operations transferred to three separate companies as part of the deal with IPIC and its Aabar Investments unit to remove another RM17 billion debt from 1MDB – as reported by the government mouthpiece Bernama but subsequently denied by Husni?
• Why is IPIC’s US1 billion (not “loan, debt or bailout”) necessary in the first place? Does this mean that the consortium of banks led by Deutsche Bank was right when they rescinded their US$975 million loan to 1MDB ahead of their due date on August 31 because 1MDB provided “incomplete documents” as security, i.e. “false bank statements” on the US$1.103 billion being held by 1MDB’s Brazen Sky unit in BSI Singapore, originally from a tranche of offshore deposits it previously kept in the Cayman Islands.
• What punitive action had been taken against the 1MDB officials for such irresponsible and criminal mismanagement resulting in the consortium of banks rescinding 1MDB’s US$975 million ahead of its due date?
• How 1MDB could pile up RM42 billion debts in six years when Najib is the final approving authority for all these transactions?
• The full relationship of Najib and the “mover and shaker” of the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal, Jho Low.
Will Najib start being fair to all Malaysians and start answering these among the thousand-and-one questions about the 1MDB scandal?
How to be fair when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about ? Yesterday he was quoted as saying that TH made RM 170 million from the TRX deal with 1MDB. 170 million out of the purchase price of 188 million ? And he’s the finance minister ?
Kit, you might as well ask, ” Will Najib commit Hara kiri?” He has everything to hide. He is trying big time to cover all the big holes that you all have dug up. How to tell the truth and reveal all? Telling more lies is probably what he will do. He cannot tell the truth now. His only hope is to find a white knight to bail him out. But RM 42 billion and the social media, very very hard to cover the big holes.