Lim Kit Siang

Was there an attempted coup against Najib involving charging him for corruption in last week of July which was pre-empted by the sudden sacking of the then Attorney-General Gani Patail?

Was there an attempted coup against the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak involving charging him for corruption in the last week of July which was pre-empted by the sudden sacking of the then Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail?

In fact, was there already a coup and unconstitutional grab for power when Gani illegally and arbitrarily set up the four-agency Special Task Force comprising Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) and the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to investigate the 1MDB scandal and RM2.6 billion deposit in Najib’s personal bank accounts by foreign sources just before the 13th General Election?

These are among the questions buzzing the everybody’s mind from the interview in Star Online by the Barisan Nasional Strategic Communications Director, Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan who is also Minister for Housing and Local Government.

Slowly, the events of what happened in the corridors of power in recent weeks, particularly in the last week of July with the sudden sacking of the Attorney-General Gani Patail, the Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and the Minister for Rural and Regional Development, Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, followed by “Nine Days of Madness in Putrajaya”, are coming to light.

All these goings-on in the corridors of power hinged on the purported draft of a corruption charge sheet against Najib, which the new Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamad Apandi Ali had declared as false.

I had right from the beginning said Apandi’s denial of the alleged draft corruption charge against the Prime Minister lacked conviction and credibility, which was also the case with regard to the “health” reason given for termination of Gani’s services as Attorney-General.

Now the truth are slowly come out, although still in dribs and drabs.

In his interview today, Abdul Rahman said Najib had to “take out people” after an alleged charge sheet against him emerged.

He said: “Given that scenario what would you do? You would take drastic action wouldn’t you?

“Okay, take these people out first, so that things will get back to normalcy and see what will happen next.

“If you could appreciate that scenario then you would understand the flurry of action taken by the prime minister.”

Abdul Rahman is only telling one side of the story, the story of those who triumphed in the “cloak and dagger” operation in Putrajaya in the past few weeks, and nobody can be sure whether it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Malaysians are in a parliamentary democracy and in the information era, and they are entitled to know what actually transpired in the “cloak-and-dagger” atmosphere of Putrajaya in the past few weeks.

These events are additional reasons which demand that Najib should go on leave to allow a full inquiry into the serious allegations about an illegal and unconstitutional grab for power as well as into the 1MDB scandal and the RM2.6 billion in Najib’s personal accounts.