No end to Malaysia’s political games after Najib’s courtroom downfall
The Malaysian public is stuck with games of three-dimensional chess between — and within — teams of politicians who are UMNO men who missed out on the power they sought through that party.
The rule of law isn’t so much about the absence of abuse of power – it’s about the absence of impunity. That’s why Malaysians can be gratified with the guilty verdict handed down against their former prime minister Najib Razak, who on July 28 was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined 210 million ringgit ($70 million) on charges relating to his role in the 1MDB corruption scandal.
The 1MDB state-owned wealth fund was established by Najib’s government in 2009 to spearhead investment in new industries in Malaysia. Instead, it became a slush fund for the prime minister and his cronies, with an estimated $US4.5 billion being misappropriated for private purposes.
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Liam Gammon is a research fellow in the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research and an editor at East Asia Forum (www.eastasiaforum.org) in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific.
