I refer to a statement by former de facto law minister Dato Seri Nancy Shukri entitled “RM1000 “ officially” paid to Tan Sri Shafee Abdullah, says Nancy” reported in Free Malaysia Today on 11th June, 2017.
In that article Dato Seri Nancy says she said in Parliament in 2015 that a sum of RM1000 was officially paid and that she was not privy to the arrangements made by the Attorney-General’s (AG) Chambers. She therefore says that her said answer in Parliament therefore remains unchanged.
With respect, this is not acceptable. When she addressed Parliament, there were no lurking concerns about the said payments. Now there are. That being the case, she or those now concerned should take it upon themselves to make inquiries and to ascertain the position. If there were other payments then the reply in Parliament needs to be amended. If there were none, then that needs to be made clear as well.
This is an occasion which demonstrates perhaps how it may be that responses given to Parliament may not always be accurate or may be incomplete. What is required is an initiative on part of the ministers concerned to make inquiries and not just plead ignorance when questions arise.
I would have thought it their duty to take reasonable steps to verify the facts in such circumstances and to make the necessary corrections or clarifications if need be.
We need not state the obvious. It is quite simple actually. Just ask the Prime Minister. Were such payments made or not? That would to my mind be a reasonable step to take.
Of course it would be best for the Prime Minister himself to respond publicly. He is also the Minister of Finance. One would expect that he would have said something by now and produced documents to support his position if need be.
What ever be the case, this will certainly be something I will raise in Parliament. The Prime Minister could of course, choose to respond in full in the Dewan Rakyat then.