The PMO has yesterday come out with a statement setting out the scope of the task force’s work and saying everyone especially members of the administration including the Deputy PM should wait for the outcome of the probe.
It says statements could cloud the people’s perception of the country’s leaders and government.
It should be the task force itself and no one else which decides and defines what its scope of work is. It is they themselves who must announce it publicly and state who its spokesperson is and the time frame it expects to take to complete its investigations.
This is basic. The Attorney-General should know this. Why is the office of the person being probed making statements on behalf of the force? There would be a conflict of interest and this may lead to even more suspicion, causing further damage to the credibility of the Special Task Force.
It is most unfortunate that although the force has been probing the matter for months now, it has not uttered a single word about what it has done and where it hopes to go to with its investigation. There is no indication as to who its spokesperson is and so, no one knows how to communicate with it and its doing a great job burying its head in the sand as well whilst hundreds of questions keep coming up almost daily about 1MDB.
The PMO must have wishful thinking if it hopes to stop the 1MDB debate by issuing just one press statement and asking everyone to wait.
The people don’t want orders. They want answers and until and unless those answers are given, the debate will go on.
If PMO wants the debate to stop, then perhaps it should come out with a statement setting out clearly answers to the multimillion dollar question raised by WSJ which is whether monies did in fact go into the Prime Ministers account as alleged. A simple yes or no?
That is the question on the uppermost of everybody’s mind. Why is it so difficult for the Prime Minister, his office or even the Special Task Force to respond to that?
The longer the silence over a matter so simple to answer, the greater the suspicion and the more the debate.
I call upon the four Tan Sri’s to set the record right and reprimand the PMO. If it does not, then it would be seriously dented in its credibility and it wouldn’t be out of place for the people to think that there is a serious lack of independence in the force and of course, the consequence of that is an obvious looming stamp of no confidence for it.