Kit Siang: Najib’s next 60 days may be worse

The Prime Minister can still stumble and fall because of extraneous developments not fully under his control and the collapse of 1MDB.

KUALA LUMPUR: DAP elder statesman Lim Kit Siang has been left wondering what the next two months will bring for embattled Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. “Will the next two months be as disastrous as the past two months or even worse?”

“Najib’s 1MDB ‘empire’ may collapse like a house of cards.”

Lim, who is also DAP Parliamentary Leader and Gelang Patah MP, thinks that Najib can still stumble and fall because of extraneous developments not fully under his control. “One indication came on Monday when the Abu Dhabi state fund Aabar Investments indicated it may refuse to invest in a RM2.5 billion rights issue by RHB Capital.”

“This is a sign of disappointment among Gulf investors in the economic and political instability in Malaysia.”

Already, said Lim, Malaysia has notched a new infamy by having the first Asian-Pacific serving Prime Minister to be investigated for corruption and money-laundering by the US Department of Justice under its Kleptocrat Asset Recovery Initiative.

Lim was commenting on Najib’s on-going lackluster visit to New York and the United Nations. “As a result, will Najib pull out in the last minute from officiating at the 21-23 October Global Transformation Forum in Kuala Lumpur in the same way he pulled out of the International Anti Corruption Conference (IACC) in Putrajaya on September 2 to 4?”

“The climax of his international programme at home, the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur on November 18 -22 with Malaysia as ASEAN Chair, may be as lackluster as his visit to New York and the United Nations.”

Under the circumstance, he ventured, there may be a vote of no confidence against the Prime Minister in the budget meeting of Parliament, with some Umno/Barisan Nasional (BN) MPs crossing the floor of the House to join forces with the Opposition MPs. “Najib thinks that he’s invincible and untouchable, because he has fully locked up the support of Umno/BN MPs.”

Before the Prime Minister launched an offensive against his enemies inside and outside Umno two months ago, said Lim, the people were already quite punch-drunk with a myriad of scandals of high-level political corruption which included two mega-scandals viz. the RM50 billion 1MDB controversy and the RM2.6 billion “donation” issue.

Then, he said, there was also the blocking of the whistleblower website Sarawak Report, a notice to Interpol for the arrest of its editor Claire Rewcastle Brown, the three-month suspension of the Edge publications, and a slew of police actions under Section 124 of Penal Code for purported international plots to “topple” Najib as Prime Minister.

The value of the Malaysian ringgit to the US dollar fell by some 60 sen in two months since the Cabinet reshuffle, pointed out Lim, when it had taken more than a year to fall from the level of 3.20 to 3.80 to the US dollar. “Why did the ringgit depreciate and the trust deficit dissipate so fast in the past two months?”

The DAP veteran noted that market analysts have forecast that the ringgit will fall to 4.50 to the US greenback by the end of the year, “but with the drastic slide in value of the Malaysian ringgit since Monday, the ringgit may fall to 4.50 to the US greenback well before the end of the year.”