Here’s How Najib Regime Creatively “Chicken Out” From 1MDB Debate

Everybody was looking forward to an entertaining Friday debate today between Najib’s minion and an opposition outspoken badass on 1MDB scandal that has accumulated debts to the tune of RM42 billion. Mr. Arul Kanda Kandasamy, the President and Group Executive Director of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was supposed to debate with MP Tony Pua.

Mr. Tony has challenged Arul for a debate on 1MDB scandal. At first Arul accepted the challenge but with one condition – Pua must resign from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). One has to remember that PAC is a powerful parliamentary committee that gets its powers from Sect 77(1) of the Malaysian Parliamentary Standing Order.

Under this provision, the PAC has the power to call witnesses and documents relevant to its investigations into money allocated by the parliament to various government agencies. Theoretically, PAC can even call Prime Minister Najib Razak to testify and if he refuses, he can be hauled up to Parliament by the police. That basically tells how powerful PAC is.

Practically, the new chairman of PAC – MP Hasan Ariffin – would not dare to summon his own boss PM Najib to be “interrogated”, of course. So, who in their right minds would give up the powerful PAC membership just to debate with a boss from a heavily tainted company? As a member of PAC, it would be very stupid for Tony to resign just for the sake of a debate.

Mr. Arul then backed down and dropped his earlier condition and agreed to a live televised debate with Tony Pua, a DAP lawmaker. But why would Arul Kanda, a debating champion, impose the silly condition in the first place if he genuinely wanted to go into the ring and slaughter and humiliate Tony? Isn’t the objective was to clear Najib’s good name?

Can you imagine President Barack Obama demanding President Vladimir Putin’s resignation as Russian president before start bombing ISIS/ISIL in Syria? How about telling presidential candidate Donald Trump to quit all his businesses before running for the White House? Anyways, do you get the gist? Frankly, the debate would not produce any positive results.

That’s because a serial liar Mr. Arul Kanda would do his normal Bollywood stunt – twisting, hiding and lying at every corner during the debate. After all, didn’t he tell the whole world that he saw with his own eyes the redeemed US$939,874,085 from Cayman Islands was in hard “CASH”; only to make a U-turn and admitted later that there wasn’t any “cash” at all but merely “UNITS”, whatever that means?

Perhaps sensing this “loophole” in a debate, Tony Pua suggested a question-and-answer session instead. He had even revealed tips – 10 questions – that he would ask Arul during the debate. The opposition hidden agenda was quite simple. They wanted to leverage on government-controlled TV media tobroadcast 1MDB scandal nationwide that Najib regime doesn’t want the rural folks to know.

Initially, Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak, one of PM Najib Razak’s strongest bootlickers, happily offered a live coverage of the 1MDB debate scheduled to be held today (Nov 6th, 2015 – Friday). Even Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi has prepared lots of popcorn and Coke to watch the debate. Now, the live coverage is off. It wasn’t a sincere offer.

Najib regime must have thought the debate would do them a favour with Mr. Champion Arul thrashing, jabbing and insulting financial wizard Tony Pua so bad that the opposition badass wishes he never exists. Everyone in UMNO was super excited that they orgasm just thinking about the debate. Suddenly, they realised that the debate could be a trap after all.

 

In reality, opposition parties have nothing to lose with the debate. After the appointment of bias UMNO MP Hasan Ariffin as the new chairman of PAC, it is as good as declaring 1MDB the greatest investment company which is superior to Berkshire Hathaway. Heck, Mr. Hasan isn’t even sure if he should summon 1MDB mastermind Jho Low.

With Sarawak state election around the corner, Najib regime has everything to lose if the debate is permitted. A better understanding of 1MDB scandalmeans more people would vote for the opposition. Suddenly, pro-Najib bloggers make a huge U-turn, belittling the benefits of the debate when they were extremely supportive of the plan at the beginning.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia was tasked to stop Tony Pua from debating with Arul, unless the opposition quits PAC. Additionally, Pandikar said Arul Kanda cannot appear as a witness before the PAC in its probe into 1MDB if he wants to debate Pua. The Speaker also childishly threatened to resign if the debate is allowed.

Tony tried to digest Parliamentary Standing Orders but couldn’t find anything that restricts him from the debate. When confronted, Mr. Pandikar claims only he knows how to interpret the Standing Orders, as if he’s the only clever literate person in the Malaysian Parliament. So, out of 222 MPs, only the Speaker knows how to read and comprehend rules (*grin*).

If everyone in UMNO was freaking sure Tony would be fried and insulted in the debate, why creates so many road blocks and conditions to stop Tony from being humiliated? Wouldn’t it be nice to see “potty mouth” Tony cry on TV in front of millions of village folks, particularly the Sarawakians, after being embarrassed and shamed by hero Arul?

And now Najib supporters are writing tons of articles that Tony was such a coward for withdrawing from the debate. Did Tony withdraw from the debate because he was a coward, or did he withdraw because he was forced to choose between remaining in PAC and debating with a serial liar? Do you need to be a rocket scientist to see why Tony withdrew?

The fact that there were contradicting views within Najib’s UMNO political party itself about the needs for Tony to resign before the debate session is theclearest proof that the government isn’t sure if Arul could bring glory to the regime. To be safe, opposition has decided to replace Tony Pua with popularwhistleblower Rafizi Ramli.

That essentially means the opposition parties didn’t chicken out from the debate but merely to play safe because of multiple threats from UMNO, Speaker and even the new PAC chairman themselves. However, a pro-UMNO portal, MyKMU.Net, saw it fit to play racial cards and said this proved that the “Chinese in DAP” are cowards.

It further claims that the Chinese DAP becomes so fearful that a Malay PKR replaces them in the debate. Going by the logic, can I argue that UMNO is bankrupt of intelligent Malay that they now depend on Indian, never mind he’s a serial liar, to defend Najib Razak? Hence, the Malay UMNO becomes so useless that an Indian corporate executive is defending them?

In the same breath, is UMNO admitting that all courageous and intelligent Malays have migrated to the oppositions? MyKMU.Net, a staunch defender of Najib Razak, also claims that Speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia stepped in to save the DAP lawmaker from further embarrassment. It makes you wonder what grass have these half-past-six bloggers been smoking.

Why would Pandikar who is willing to defend Najib with his own life wanted to save opposition Tony? Clearly, the whole drama was a genius trick to create a perception that Arul was an honest man, that 1MDB has nothing to hide, that PM Najib Razak was not corrupted, that government-controlled TV was willing to broadcast a debate with opposition and whatnot.

Behind the scene, they threw in tons of obstacles and gags to prevent the debate from happening. They never wanted a live debate on the 1MDB scandal from the beginning. The primary objective was to clear PM Najib Razak’s good name. So does it make any difference if Arul is to debate with Tony Pua, Rafizi Ramli, Lim Kit Siang or even Mahathir Mohamad for that matter? -financetwitter