Kadir: WSJ report may be Najib’s Waterloo
Asking Najib to quit the government is not a good idea if he has committed criminal breach of trust and abused power.
(Free Malaysia Today) – It remains to be seen, said a veteran newsman in taking to his blog, whether a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report tracing nearly USD700 million ending up in Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s personal bank accounts turns out to be his Waterloo. (The exact figure is USD681, 999,976 or about RM2.6 billion.)
“Najib and his agents in fact don’t have anything to say about the WSJ report. Instead, he has launched a fierce attack against former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, accusing him of criminal tactics ‘to topple a democratically-elected Prime Minister’.”
Hence, the Waterloo verdict is veteran newsman Kadir Jasin’s summing up of the Prime Minister’s reaction to the WSJ report. “Najib has a choice to pursue the various publications in their countries of domicile if he thinks that they have been in cahoots with Mahathir.”
“Najib may be over-acting by claiming that overthrowing him was tantamount to overthrowing the government. When his father the late Abdul Razak “overthrew” then Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1969, the Alliance Government remained.”
Waterloo, for those not familiar, was the battleground in Belgium where Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte met his defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley and Prussian Prince Blucher. He had earlier been exiled to the Island of Elba in the Mediterranean after abdicating on 11 April 1814 but escaped and regained his throne for 100 days until 18 June 1815.
Taking off from Najib’s tirade in a Facebook posting https://www.facebook.com/najibrazak . . . Kadir, a former New Straits Times Group Editor in Chief, ventures that the guilty parties, even if it includes the Prime Minister, must be brought to book. “We can seek a political solution by pressing for Najib’s departure if there’s sufficient evidence that he has been involved in criminal breach of trust (CBT) or abuse of power,” concedes Kadir. “However, justice must be allowed to prevail. The guilty parties must be made to face the full brunt of the law as Najib himself has called for in his Facebook posting.”
For starters, he isn’t impressed by Najib’s story that he had never taken funds for personal gain as confirmed by 1MDB, SRC International and other entities. “He might not have taken funds for personal purposes but he may have taken them for other purposes, as widely alleged, for funding the election campaign, for example,” said Kadir. “But what about commissions and under the counter payments generated by businesses linked to 1MDB, SRC and others?”
He stressed that Najib has not denied that he has bank accounts with AmBank, the bank named in the WSJ report. “It would be an offence for the bank to keep quiet if Najib does not have accounts with it.”
The veteran newsman urged the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) to also begin by investigating Najib’s daughter’s recent lavish wedding receptions and also find out whether his wife, Rosmah, has assets like palatial homes abroad.
“It’s also important for investigators to investigate companies like Genting and interrogate individuals like Ananda Krishnan and Jho Low and the Arabs who have been named so far as linked to 1MDB.”
The burden of responsibility was the greatest for the political masters, he cautioned. “They have access to the investigating authorities and may be accused of complicity and treachery if they do nothing.”
Kadir warned that the investigating authorities concerned cannot be seen as uninterested, slow or hesitant. “If there’s a case, even against the Prime Minister, they must have the courage to act,” said Kadir. “It’s folly for the agencies concerned to assume that what they know about the case was a total secret.”
