MP SPEAKS | The most outstanding aspect of both the speeches by the first two BN MPs, Umno president and parliamentary opposition leader, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (Bagan Datuk) and the MCA deputy president and MP for Ayer Itam, Wee Ka Siong, in the 14th parliament in the current parliamentary debate is their conspiracy of silence on the greatest and worst corruption scandal in the country’s history.

That is, the monstrous international 1MDB corruption and money-laundering scandal which had given Malaysia the infamy, ignominy and iniquity of a global kleptocracy.

Will all the BN MPs follow the lead by Zahid and Wee last week in a conspiracy of silence, and avoid the 1MDB corruption scandal like the plague when debating in Parliament, not only in the current agenda of motion of thanks for the royal address but in all future parliamentary business?

This is a most cowardly act, particularly for those who had been in the 13th Parliament, whether as minister, deputy minister or mere MPs, for they had been part and parcel of the disgraceful and even unpatriotic conspiracy and betrayal in muzzling Parliament from probing and debating the 1MDB corruption scandal, and failing to lift a finger to defend and clear Malaysia’s of the international infamy, ignominy and iniquity of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy.

This is the time for them to make amends. Will they do so?

Or will they compound their national betrayal?

As for those BN MPs who are in Parliament for the first time, are they going to join in the conspiracy of silence and sully their parliamentary record?

The speeches of the BN MPs in the next five days of the parliamentary debate on the royal address will be scrutinised as to whether they have the political courage and honesty to own up to the monstrosity of the criminality and moral turpitude of the 1MDB corruption scandal.

If they need to be reminded of such monstrous excesses, they cannot do better than to go to the Internet and refer to the 251-page kleptocratic litigation filed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in July 2016 and June 2017 to forfeit US$1.7 billion of 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, United Kingdom and Switzerland.

If they continue to exhibit a collective amnesia to avoid the 1MDB issue in Parliament, the 32 million Malaysians will be entitled to ask if they are so craven, cowardly and unpatriotic as to be unwilling to address the worst case of Malaysian corruption in world history?

Task for new PAC

The new Parliament will have to appoint a courageous public accounts committee (PAC) that is brave and conscientious to undo the stain of the PAC of the 13th Parliament, which failed to carry out its duties conscientiously by carrying a comprehensive and independent investigation into the 1MDB corruption scandal.

The PAC of the 13th Parliament committed the inexcusable dereliction of duty and negligence in failing to re-open investigations into the 1MDB corruption scandal after the additional filings of the US DOJ litigation in June 2017 - which had revealed new and additional relevant evidence of the corruption, abuses of power and embezzlement - after the PAC had completed and tabled its 1MDB report in Parliament in April 2017.

I fully agree that the post of chairperson of public accounts committee is held by an opposition MP, but is there such a brave soul to be a candidate from the opposition to take on the responsibility, whose first duties must be to investigate, among other things, three matters, viz:

Firstly, to find out why the PAC of the 13th Parliament had failed to carry out an effective, meaningful and comprehensive investigation into the 1MDB corruption scandal; whether there was interference from the then prime minister, who was a protagonist in the 1MDB corruption scandal;

Secondly, why the PAC failed to make any responses to clear Malaysia’s international infamy, ignominy and iniquity for the epithet of a global kleptocracy; and

Thirdly, to carry out the long-awaited comprehensive investigation into the 1MDB corruption scandal.

LIM KIT SIANG is DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri.

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