KUALA LUMPUR: Prime minister Najib Razak’s belief that he has been vindicated was described today as “a fantasy” by the UK Sunday newspaper, the Observer.
In an editorial today about the RM2.6 billion deposit in Najib’s private bank accounts, the Attorney-General’s findings last week, and the long-drawn out issues about 1Malaysia Development Bhd, the newspaper said:
“The scandal will live on in the minds of voters who have more reason than ever to distrust those who presume to lead them on the basis of privilege, wealth and inequality”.
Last week, the Attorney-General, Apandi Ali, had found no criminal wrongdoing in the matter and the prime minister declared that he had been vindicated when he had said that the money had been a personal donation from the Saudi royal family and was meant to support the Barisan Nasional’s election campaign in 2013.
But the Observer said: “It lives on in the minds of the FBI and investigators in Switzerland and Hong Kong that are still probing 1MDB. And it shines a spotlight on Malaysia’s worsening democratic deficit, whether defined in terms of shady campaign finances, electoral manipulation and foreign interference, human rights abuses, weak and unreliable governance – or downright venality.”
The Sunday newspaper provided no additional information of its own to explain its conclusions, but relied on a report by Human Rights Watch this month as well as reporting by the Wall Street Journal; it also mentioned a source quoted by Malaysia Chronicle and a source quoted by the BBC about the purported Saudi donation.
The Observer said Apandi’s report had created an “intense firestorm”, after his “arbitrary dismissal of potentially career-ending corruption allegations” against Najib.
The paper also described Najib as being “seen by growing numbers of fellow citizens as unfit to rule the country whose leadership he inherited as if by right”
The Observer also accused the Najib government of repression and curbs on media freedoms “more reminiscent of Russia than of a supposedly functional, pro-western democracy closely allied to Britain and the US”.
Source from FMT News
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