KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — Lim Kit Siang urged the police to investigate a previously claimed plot to undemocratically remove Datuk Seri Najib Razak as prime minister, starting with former Barisan Nasional communications strategist Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan.
The DAP stalwart said Abdul Rahman was the first to make the allegation in an interview with The Star Online in 2015, in what was likely an attempt to justify the preceding crackdown on Najib’s critics over the 1MDB saga that Lim described as the “Week of Long Knives”.
“It is time that all lights are focussed on this mystery which is a blot on six decades of Malaysian democracy,” the Iskandar Puteri MP said in a statement.
“This was the key question buzzing in everybody’s mind after an interview in Star Online in August 2015 by the Barisan Nasional Strategic Communications Director.”
On Sunday, Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng filed a police report to prompt an investigation against former attorney general (AG) Tan Sri Apandi Ali for an attempted cover-up in the latter’s clearance of Najib in the 1MDB corruption scandal.
This comes after Malaysiakini reported that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has yet to question Apandi. The news portal quoted an anonymous source.
Inspector-General of Police Abdul Datuk Seri Hamid Bador told the press yesterday that the matter will be investigated.
A police investigation could shed light on the events that transpired in what Lim called the “Week of Long Knives” on July and August 2015, when the Najib administration acted swiftly to sack or replace key government figures, including then AG Tan Sri Abdul Gani Pattail.
The crackdown reportedly took place just a few days before Abdul Gani was to press charges against the former prime minister.
Within that same period, Najib also sacked then deputy prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and rural and regional development minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal followed by “Nine Days of Madness in Putrajaya”, which saw officials involved in the 1MDB probe purged.
Among them were two MACC officers, special operations division director Bahri Mohamad Zin and strategic communication director Rohaizad Yaakob who were transferred out of the anti-graft agency.
This has since prompted calls for former chief secretary to the government Tan Sri Ali Hamsa and director-general of the Public Service Department Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidi to be investigated for power abuse.
Former AG Tan Sri Abu Talib said on August 2015 that the two had likely transgressed the law by making the transfers.
“Malaysians are in a parliamentary democracy and in the information era, and they are entitled to know what actually transpired in the “cloak-and-dagger” operations of the Week of Long Knives in July/August 2015 in Putrajaya,” the DAP veteran said.
