Kit Siang: Hasan should re-open hearings on 1MDB or resign
The PAC Report on 1MDB, alleged Lim who is also Gelang Patah MP, has only dealt with the “tip of the iceberg” on the financial scandal. “It has left many leading and important questions unanswered.”
Expressing dissatisfaction with the PAC Report on 1MDB, the DAP veteran said that Parliamentary Standing Orders do not give the PAC powers, as a committee of Parliament, to receive information which is denied to Parliament. “This is tantamount to the PAC arrogating to itself powers it does not have.”
Again, said Lim, the Parliamentary Standing Orders do not allow the PAC Chairman to unilaterally and arbitrarily tamper with a Report which had been finalized by it.
The Parliamentary Standing Orders, continued Lim, do not also confer on the PAC Chairman the power to receive correspondence or information which is denied to other members of the Committee. He cited, as an example, the “so-called” Bank Negara letter to the PAC Chairman about Good Star Limited (GSL), the “mysterious company” implicated in the “original sin” of the 1MDB financial scandal.
Hasan, said Lim, in coming to the crux of the matter on the concluded PAC Report, “should apologise for his several breaches of parliamentary privileges in connection with the Committee’s Report on 1MDB. He should also make amends by tabling in Parliament the Report of the Auditor-General on 1MDB.”
“He promised this on March 7.”
Hasan, reiterated Lim, should also re-open hearings on the 1MDB financial scandal.
The PAC Chairman gave a “categorical statement” on March 7 that the Auditor-General’s final report on 1MDB investigations would be “declassified” under the Official Secrets Act 1972 once the PAC tables its report to Parliament, pointed out Lim. “There are no signs that the Auditor-General’s final report on the 1MDB will be tabled in Parliament.”
He noted that Parliament will adjourn on Thursday this week and yet Hasan was dragging his feet on tabling the Auditor-General’s final report on 1MDB as an attachment to the PAC Report. “Hasan claimed on March 7 that the Auditor-General Ambrin Buang had explained that his final report on 1MDB would no longer be a classified document under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) once PAC tables its 1MDB Report.”
Lim has been left wondering, as a result, whether Hasan and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his government had anything to hide in refusing to make public the Auditor-General’s final report on 1MDB.
An important principle of parliamentary democracy was involved here, argued Lim.
As PAC is a committee of Parliament, he said, any document or information provided to it must be regarded as being provided to Parliament and must be finally submitted to the August House, and “no witness or agency should be allowed to make the utterly spurious and unacceptable claim” that information provided to it was only for “intelligence” purposes and not to be extended to Parliament.
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