Malaysia under the country’s longest-serving former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad may have lost more money than RM42 billion, but the country then had more fiscal space.

Former prime ministers before Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, said PKR parliamentarian Rafizi Ramli, had more freedom to “play around” due to stable revenue from palm oil and crude oil, among others.

These had provided the country an economic buffer to experiment and "make scandals".

“They (former prime ministers) could commit scandals before,” Rafizi said to the some 1,000 attendees at a forum titled 'Twin Mega Scandals: The End to Rule of Law' in Petaling Jaya last night.

Najib’s apologists, said the Pandan MP and PKR vice-president, had therefore always pointed out how scandals involving Mahathir were "bigger" in nature.

“I don't dispute that, that's correct. If you take whatever that had happened during Mahathir’s time and take into account the inflation, of course the amount of financial mismanagement during Mahathir’s reign obviously was more than RM42 billion.

“But that's the difference. We had the fiscal space.

“We have come to a point that RM42 billion has begun to affect all the leverage that the federal government could have had."

And because of this, Rafizi firmly believes that the RM42 billion scandal will lead to a series of problems to be shouldered by the future generation.

This is contrary to the supposed structural reform on the economy that the country is to go through, Rafizi noted.

“The RM42 billion issue is intertwined into everything that it takes the country’s ability to go through economic changes," he said.

Najib's brain child, 1MDB, had amassed a debt of RM42 billion as of March 31, 2014. But Najib, earlier this year, said that the company had lessened its debts by RM40.4 billion after signing a number of agreements.

'Financial impact of debts will drag on'

Meanwhile, commenting further on the 1MDB and RM2.6 billion scandals, Rafizi believes that it will affect the country for many years to come.

“Even if we manage to put a lid on 1MDB and even if Najib promises that the rationalisation of 1MDB’s debts will put it as a thing of the past, the financial impact and repercussions of 1MDB will drag on for many years into the future."

Therefore, the magnitude of the impact on future generations should continue to be explained, he said.

“A lot of this RM42 bilion and liability incurred definitely goes beyond 30 years."

As for the culmination of the 1MDB issue, the PKR vice-president believes that it was a "sign" that God is watching.

“He’s trying to tell everyone that ‘what goes around comes around’. I know they (Mahathir, former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin and former attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail) have become sort of heroes now.

“(But I) wonder what they feel now, looking at all those years when they used to have the upper hand, using the same tactics on other people. So, serve them right,” Rafizi said.

Muhyiddin was sacked from his post as deputy prime minister after he became increasingly vocal on the 1MDB issue, while Gani's contract as attorney-general was terminated a few months prior to his retirement.

Meanwhile, DAP parliamentarian Tony Pua ( photo ) believes they are “very close” to discovering the people responsible for the “1MDB scam” and the identity of the “donor” for Najib.

Certain that the matter will not rest, Pua pointed out how interest in the issues had gone beyond the country’s shores.

“Authorities all around the world are now interested in how clever our prime minister is.

“Foreign newspapers are all very interested to learn how to get more donation from our prime minister.

“You can be assured that it's only a matter of time before the truth is discovered and before we can achieve our goal of getting rid of this lovely prime minister that we have,” said Pua, the MP for Petaling Jaya Utara.

In the past year, Najib has faced scandals in the form of both the 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion donation issue.

He has consistently denied any wrongdoing and attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali last month also cleared him of any wrongdoing on the issues.