ABC raises questions that need answering

The Najib administration is now subject to keener international scrutiny.

COMMENT

The ABC Four Corners report on Malaysia presents a chilling look at the oppressive mood that hangs over the country. The report indirectly exposes how tame Malaysian journalists are compared to their persistent foreign counterparts. It gives us a stark reminder that we do live in something less than a perfect democracy.

Malaysian journalists on the ground know that there’ll be trouble if they confront the Prime Minister with the kind of tough questions that foreign journalists pose.

Some local reporters must have heaved sad and bitter sighs as they watched the ABC report, wondering if they too could ever pursue the kind of journalism practised in mature democracies.

The reports’ release has caused confusion in Putrajaya, unused as it is to having to explain itself openly. The Prime Minister’s men crowed as they pointed to ABC’s confirmation that Najib had been truthful all along about the RM2.6 billion coming from Saudi royalty. But even as they did so, they threatened to charge the Four Corners team under the Sedition Act.

Certainly, the team made some extremely sensitive allegations, even hinting that perhaps the PM’s hidden hand was behind the kidnapping and killing of prosecutor Kevin Morais, the daylight assassination of AmBank founder Hussain Najadi and, of course, the murder of Altantuya Shaariibu.

However, as a contributor to FMT has pointed out, the report hardly raised anything Malaysians didn’t know or suspect already and certainly dents the accusations that the monies in Najib’s personal bank accounts all came from 1MDB. More important, it does not prove that the murders of Altantuya, Kevin and Hussein are linked. Certainly, the slick production and compelling narrative will lead people to drawing the conclusion naturally, but conjecture is not proof. With due respect to the Four Corners team, we had expected a little more than guesswork from First World journalism.

However, the damage done by ABC will undoubtedly have ramifications for Najib. There will be attempts to use the report as a cornerstone from which to attack him.

The questions raised in the report will need answering, and the administration knows this. However, it knows too that it will have to do the answering against the backdrop of close international scrutiny, even as it makes sounds about charging the journalists responsible. To charge them would be to let them have their day in court and to invite intense coverage from news organisations worldwide.

The last thing the Najib administration wants to do is poke the hornet’s nest of international scrutiny more vigorously than it already has.