Najib: Mahathir’s behaviour selfish and unbecoming
1MDB merely a tool as Mahathir again turns against the leadership of Umno, PM says.
(Free Malaysia Today) – Prime Minister Najib Razak today hit out at Dr Mahathir Mohamad, saying that Mahathir’s crusade to seek his resignation was motivated purely by Najib’s refusal to bow to Mahathir’s personal demands and not by national interests.
Posting on his blog today, Najib said, “He wants me to resign, as he previously wanted Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to resign, because I refused to implement his personal demands.”
“It is a shame that Tun has, yet again, turned against the leadership of his own party,” Najib lamented, calling such behaviour “unbecoming.”
“This unbecoming behaviour will be an unfortunate postscript to his legacy,” Najib asserted.
Ironically, Najib was the one who benefited from his predecessor’s resignation in 2009, assuming the post of prime minister as Mahathir’s anointed successor.
Najib said that as prime minister it was his duty to lead the country in his own way and taking into account its best interests.
“I do not believe the people want a former Prime Minister to rule by proxy,” he added.
Najib went on to say that Mahathir was merely using the saga surrounding 1Malaysia Development Board (1MDB) as a means to achieve his aim of toppling him.
“Tun’s attacks in reality are not motivated by 1MDB – he is just using the company as an excuse to try and topple a serving Prime Minister,” Najib claimed. “If 1MDB had never existed, he would find another reason.”
He went on to accuse Mahathir of creating the 1MDB ‘crisis’.
“Tun created a crisis when he recklessly claimed that RM42 billion was missing from 1MDB and that the company’s financial assets, worth approximately RM16 billion, were worthless,” Najib said, adding that such statements were false and “have created unnecessary panic.”
He explained that the RM42 billion figure regularly bandied about as “losses” was in fact “debt”.
“The RM42 billion debt is backed by RM51 billion assets as at the 2014 financial closing,” Najib explained.
“It is wrong for Tun to falsely allege that RM42billion, or RM27billion as he later changed the figure to, is ‘missing’,” Najib added.
