The Hasan Arifin Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is a far cry and a pale shadow of the Nur Jazlan PAC.
Nur Jazlan Mohamad as Chairman of the PAC created parliamentary history in raising credibility and public respect for PAC to such a high pedestal that it became the only hope for Malaysians that there would be an independent, professional and non-holds barred investigation into Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s twin mega scandals – the RM55 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion “donation” scandal.
In Nur Jazlan’s own words, for the first time, Malaysians harboured high hopes that there was still someone in UMNO who wanted to do the right thing.
All these hopes were dashed when Najib purged his government at the end of July last year, sacking the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, the Senior Minister for Rural and Regional Development, Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, the Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail, followed by a campaign of fear and intimidation at high levels of government with the arrest or immediate transfer of recalcitrant officers in the Attorney-General’s Chambers, Bank Negara, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and the Police and the dissolution of the high-powered multi-agency “Four Tan Sri’s” Special Task Force on 1MDB.
PAC, which was launching into a full-scale probe into 1MDB led by PAC Chairman Nur Jazlan, was sabotaged and derailed for four months from continuing with 1MDB investigations with Najib’s power-play of appointing Nur Jazlan as Deputy Home Minister as well as the promotion of three other Barisan Nasional members of PAC into executive branch of government.
The appointment of Datuk Hasan Arifin as the new PAC Chairman, with his unforgettable “cari makan” start of his parliamentary tenure, destroyed the people’s high hopes in PAC as their only hope for any breakthrough in forcing the Prime Minister to give full accountability for the twin mega scandals
This is confirmed by the total lack of any sense of urgency and priority of the Hasan PAC to complete the PAC investigations on 1MDB in the shortest possible time.
Three days ago, Hasan as good as announced that the PAC under him would not be able to submit its report on the 1MDB probe even for the March meeting of Parliament, leaving open the prospect that the PAC report on the 1MDB may not even see the light of day within this year.
What is more horrifying is that the PAC under Hasan Arifin has no interest whatsoever in summoning business tycoon Low Taek Jho to appear before the PAC to testify about Najib’s twin mega scandals, although the PAC under Nur Jazlan had decided on July 24 last year that Low Taek Jho should appear before it on Sept. 8 to testify on the 1MDB scandal.
Furthermore, Hasan’s PAC has also no interest in summoning the Prime Minister to testify before the PAC, although Nur Jazlan had said on record that he would summon the Prime Minister as witness before the PAC “if necessary”.
There can be no doubt that it would be necessary to summon Najib before the PAC as Najib is the only person, apart from Jho Low, who knows the ins-and-outs of the RM2.6 billion ‘donation’ and RM55 billion 1MDB twin mega scandals in the past six years, as Arul Kanda Kandasamy is only the latest ‘operative’ to join the ‘revolving-door’ teams of operatives who had been employed to take orders to run the 1MDB in the past six years.
If Hasan Arifin is not prepared to be a second “Nur Jazlan” as a competent, conscientious and professional PAC Chairman who will get to the bottom of Najib’s twin mega scandals, without fear or favour including the Prime Minister, Hasan should resign as PAC Chairman so that a new Chairman could be appointed to carry out Nur Jazlan’s unfinished task in the PAC.