Dzulkefly Ahmad
The Malaysian Insider
6 July 2015
1. Granted, that the damning expose by both Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Sarawak Report of the transfer of some US$700 million to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal account heralded Najib’s Waterloo, is a fait accompli and foregone.
2. Perusing the sensational exposition, one couldn’t help thinking that it is neither concocted nor a decoy personally contrived by Najib to divert media attention. Purporting it as a political sabotage, by political nemesis, doesn’t reduce its grave consequences on Najib.
3. Going by its incriminating details conducted by investigators for the Malaysian authorities as reported, Najib has truly met his Waterloo. Yes, he has finally been nuked by 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a monster or more appropriately a “trojan horse” he personally helped to create to “embezzle funds” for his “do-or-die” election mission of the 13th general election in 2013.
4. What a way to end an otherwise “promising legacy” of Najibnomics, are both extremely perplexing, much as it is most disgraceful and devastating to his entire political career.
5. Going by the expose, what else needs investigating? The beneficiary’s account in an AmBank in Kuala Lumpur (for high net-worth individuals), belongs to Najib Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Period. There has not been any outright denial on that exposition.
6. All doubts about its accuracy, amount and dates of transactions, could also simply be verified, by a single phone call by the investigating authority to the AmBank branch concerned.
7. Do not spend a single ringgit more of the public fund to institute any form of a Commission of Investigation, much less a Royal one, after billions have already been plundered. The case isn’t deserving at all to warrant such action.
8. By far, the largest amount deposited of US$620 million and US$61 million were in March 2013, in the heat of the general election campaign. The cash came from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands via a Swiss bank owned by an Abu Dhabi state fund. The rest is history. All other details are already amply available. It is now for the Attorney-General to act without further ado.
9. The unsolicited confession of the unnamed government spokesperson that “The prime minister has not taken any funds for his personal use” is entirely irrelevant, at this juncture. Najib has similarly just now confessed that he didn’t use the fund for personal gains. It is an open secret, that state funds had always been alleged to be abused for Umno-Barisan Nasional parties’ general election needs. But this revelation is a “bomb-shell” that will annihilate the entire Umno-BN.
10. But what has this incriminating expose’ actually exposed?
Well, as usual, I would like to call “a spade a spade”. And it is no longer merely about the number 1 person of this ailing nation. It is about the damning impact on the entire nation!
11. Yes, admittedly, we have become a “failed state”, where critical institutions of the nation have failed in its duties to be the true custodians of the public interest and of its citizenry, the Rakyat!
12. Why had not the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) immediately stepped in? Given Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz’s impeccable integrity as a governor is widely acknowledged globally, the question becomes ostensibly very disturbing.
13. Were BNM complicit to the whole transactions and even more bizarre, were they incompetent or worst, “coerced into submission” on those instances?
Well, one could easily rationalise the BNM’s catch-22 position, when the beneficiary concerned is none other than the most powerful, number 1 in Putrajaya. All the more difficult for BNM was because the funds, as already said, were not for personal gain as such. Or so it was purported to be. But that is immaterial and academic for now.
But criminal, it nonetheless is, by way of the many rules it had broken, that of of Anti-Money Laundering Act, AMLA of the least, while evidently abusing colossal public fund for parties’ partisan purposes and needs.
14. Be that as it may, this debacle has surely opened a Pandora box of sort, with more grim revelation of the state of affairs of this “failing nation”. Yes, we have truly become “A Failed State” in our own weird and humiliating ways.
The unending malaise of “party political funding” as the root of all crony capitalism and the endemic corruption in this country, must be immediately attended to by the legislative branch of the government ie the bicameral Parliament, for any semblance of a vibrant democracy to ever be witnessed.
15. While BNM is notably not only blameworthy for not being transparent, it is even bordering on being criminal themselves, by choosing to be complicit in crime, for not apprehending the culprits earlier.
This fiasco has undoubtedly ruined whatever little remnant of integrity left of this nation, after it has been being mercilessly abused by the power-that-be in Putrajaya for decades now.
16. Najib, while I may jump the gun in “pronouncing you guilty”, this could very well be the final Smoking Gun we all waited “to be blazed on you and your cahoots”, in striving for A Better Malaysia!
Sorry Sir, your time is up! Game Over! – July 6, 2015.