KIT SIANG SMELLS A RAT: Cabinet meeting on 1MDB 'scripted' to avoid real accountability for RM42 BIL debt?

The Cabinet meeting and outcome on 1MDB yesterday seemed to have been scripted and choreographed by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s “master publicist” Paul Stadlen with one objective in mind, to avoid accountability for the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal in the whole month of Parliament beginning on Monday.

If true, this must be the first time a Cabinet anywhere in the world is led by the nose like a flock of sheep by a “master publicist” to play out the script choreographed even before the Cabinet meeting, which does not redound to the credit of Malaysia’s Ministers, whether their intelligence or integrity.

The cabinet decided, after 1MDB and its auditors provided a briefing on the company’s current situation and responded to a series of questions posed by Cabinet Ministers, including the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, that the debt-laden state investment firm 1MDB has done nothing wrong.

Did all the 35 Cabinet Ministers yesterday know what they were doing and fully understood the going-ons in 1MBD in the past six years when they issued a clean bill of health and integrity to 1MDB?

Were they presented with any Cabinet papers on the 1MDB to read and study before the Cabinet meeting?

Were they given access to the “thousands” of 1MDB transactions and email which London Sunday Times and Sarawak Report have said they have obtained access to, despite abrupt attempts by 1MDB at the end of last year to call in all of its computers, employee laptops and servers to wipe them clean of such transactions and emails?

PM Najib

Be that as it may, after yesterday’s Cabinet meeting which issued the 1MDB a clean bill of health and integrity, all the 35 Ministers in the Najib Cabinet are now individually and collectively implicated in all the going-ons in 1MDB and cannot plead ignorance as an excuse.

Let all the 35 Ministers, henceforth, go up and down the country and answer the thousand-and-one questions about the shenanigans in 1MDB in the past six years, since they have arrogated to themselves the role as the stout defenders of 1MDB.

If the Cabinet has issued a clean bill of health and integrity to 1MDB, the Prime Minister and all the Cabinet Ministers must be prepared to stand up in Parliament during the entire month of meeting from March 9 to April 9 to answer and defend all the going-ons in 1MDB in the past six years, which clearly they are not prepared to do.

This is the only rationale for the Prime Minister’s instruction to the Auditor-General to independently verify 1MDB accounts and that “If any wrongdoing is proven, the law will be enforced without exception”.

Surely, it is premature for the Cabinet to declare that 1MDB has done nothing wrong when the Auditor-General has yet to verify the 1MDB accounts.

But this is the whole object of the devious plot in the Cabinet choreography yesterday – for the Cabinet to declare a clean bill of health and integrity for 1MDB and to stymie and forestall any parliamentary questioning in the month-long Parliament meeting beginning on March 9 by declaring that any questions about 1MDB should be put in abeyance until the Auditor-General has completed and reported on his investigations into the 1MDB accounts.

I am prepared to be proven wrong.

Let Najib clarify that he and his Ministers will not run away or stonewall parliamentary queries about the 1MDB scandal in the forthcoming Parliamentary meeting, by claiming that all questions on the 1MDB scandal should await the outcome of the Auditor-General’s investigations and the PAC follow-up.

Let Najib and his Ministers make a commitment that they will not avoid or evade parliamentary questions as to how the Cabinet can issue a clean bill of health and integrity for 1MDB when the Auditor-General had not even started his investigations into the 1MDB accounts!

Lim Kit Siang is DAP Adviser