This one I can only tweet with the benefit of hindsight. And thanks to Sarawak Report for the Summary. While everyone thought Najib was very confident going into elections, he was actually shitting in his pants.
Sarawak Report lists down the cowardly action Najib took to save himself: Plan A was the extraordinary last minute gerrymandering of boundaries; Plan B was the outrageous Fake News Law to intimidate critics; Plan C the ‘outlawing’ of Bersatu the key Malay opposition party;
Plan D was the ‘legitimising’ of UMNO by the Registrar of Societies, despite illegally failing to conduct internal elections; Plan E the decree that the images of the popular leaders of the opposition must be literally cut out of posters;
Plan F a huge series of astonishing financial promises to the population that will never be fulfilled. The other important plan not listed by Sarawak Report was the firefighting in United States.
We expected a huge breakout of the scandal in Feb 2018 when the U.S. DOJ supposed to reveal their criminal suit against Jho Low and Co. That didn’t happen and U.S. filed the case under seal.
Strange things happened prior to that like Red Granite getting control of the assets and followed by Riza Aziz’s settlement. Riza Aziz’s settlement was a damn good deal. He was only required to pay USD60m via instalments whereas the known amount he looted amounted to USD238m!
Returning only 25% of the loot and securing his rest of the assets was a damn good deal. And moreover, if I am Najib, I would be shit-scarred that the scandal would break out in US and will expedite elections. He didn’t. Why?
Was he comforted by criminals in power in the United States like Trump & Co? And of course we know very well Trump’s close buddy Elliott Broidy was there taking money from the Kleptocrat’s Team.
In the end, Malaysians only had to rely on themselves to take the country back from thieves. No help is better than self-help.
