Monday, March 27, 2017

Open Invitation to Second Finance Minister, Dato’ Seri Johari Abdul Ghani on Monday, 27 March 2017


A week ago, Second Finance Minister, Dato’ Seri Johari Abdul Ghani wrote an open letter to me asking me to give the 1MDB issue “a rest”.  I had responded the next day with an open letter outlining some of the many reasons why I won’t “give it a rest”.  This includes the fact that the Minister has not only failed to answer the questions which have been posed, and the multiple attempts to obfuscate the truth for the Malaysian public.

However, a week later, the Minister has unfortunately chosen to maintain an elegant silence.  Perhaps Dato’ Seri Johari is just hoping that I would have no choice but to then “give it a rest”.

If so, the Minister must be daydreaming.  Instead, I would like to offer Dato’ Seri Johari Abdul Ghani the perfect opportunity to not only give the 1MDB issue a rest, but to give me “a rest”.

I would like to extend an open invitation to the Second Finance Minister to come to my fund-raising dinner on Saturday, 6 May 2017 to be held in the heart of the Petaling Jaya Utara (PJU) constitueny, at the SS2 open air carpark.

Dato’ Seri Johari Abdul Ghani will be given a full hour to speak uninterrupted to my voters to tell them about why they should not only give the 1MDB issue arest, but why they give me a rest by voting me out of office.  There would be no better opportunity for the Minister to do so than in front of an expected sell-out crowd of 300 tables.

Dato’ Seri Johari can explain to the 3,000 best-behaved audience why my “behaviour in respect of the entire affair does not fit that of a lawmaker”.

The Minister is free to put forth his argument, per his open letter, that “the spectacle of name-calling, not only towards me but towards other members of the administration as well, is nothing less than embarrassing and demeaning to your standing as a Member of Parliament.”

Then the Minister can ask the voters of PJU directly, whether “the folks of Petaling Jaya Utara elected you as their MP to do better things than just being obsessed with 1MDB”.

In fact, the other speakers who are attending the dinner are DAP Parliamentary Leader, Lim Kit Siang; former Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad; Amanah President Mat Sabu and PKR Vice-President, Rafizi Ramli.  The Minister has a chance to put all of us ‘out of business’.

No BN Ministers would offer me such an opportunity to attend their official events and get even 15 minutes to explain how the Najib administration has stolen and misappropriated some RM25 billion of funds raised by 1MDB.

However, perhaps in my foolishness, I am giving UMNO-BN an excellent chance to sign my political death warrant.  The question is, will Dato’ Seri Johari have the courage and conviction in his defense of 1MDB to pick up the gauntlet?

No comments: