The DAP parliamentary leader says Prime Minister Najib Razak failed to address concerns surrounding 1Malaysia Development Bhd in his speech when tabling Budget 2018 yesterday.
PETALING JAYA: DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has challenged Prime Minister Najib Razak to allow discussion on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) issue during the Dewan Rakyat debate on Budget 2018 next week.
The Gelang Patah MP said Najib, who is finance minister, had failed to address the issue in his speech while tabling the government’s annual financial plan in the house yesterday.
“Najib’s 2018 budget cannot lay claim to be the ‘mother of all budgets’ if he cannot claim the moral high ground of integrity, incorruptibility, good governance, transparency, accountability,” Lim said.
“For a start, is Najib prepared to allow a full parliamentary debate on the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia as a global kleptocracy in the final budget debate of the present Parliament beginning on Monday?” he added.
He said this in a statement issued after his speech at the Penang DAP Deepavali open house in Juru today.
Lim also accused Najib of attempting to “white-wash” the 1MDB affair by claiming that the sovereign wealth fund could have saved Malaysia RM200 billion over the next 20 years by tackling “lopsided” agreements with independent power producers (IPPs).
He also criticised Najib for allegedly claiming to have resolved the company’s problems.
On Oct 24, Najib had said 1MDB had played a key role in solving the lopsided power agreements signed by a former leader, in apparent reference to PPBM chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003.
“When 1MDB entered the industry, it was the lowest bidder in all its agreements, thus saving Malaysia RM200 billion over the next 20 years,” he had said in a statement.
“The report of one research house on the revised power agreements was simply titled, ’No more sweetheart deals’,” he added.
Najib had said that while it was true that 1MDB has had its share of problems, the government had revamped its management to correct the mistakes and bring the company back to financial health.
On July 5, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan had said that when 1MDB entered the IPP business, it had put in the lowest bid for every new or renewed power purchase agreement (PPA), and this pushed down the PPA prices for other bidders.
He said the savings arising from the fairer PPA rates to Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) and Petronas gas subsidies – estimated to be RM200 billion over the next 20 years – went back to projects and welfare that benefited the people while still keeping electricity prices low for everyone.
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