NAJIB Razak’s trial has taken more than a year but the former prime minister has to answer for the 1MDB debacle, said Anwar Ibrahim.

“It’s taken more than a year but he has to answer for the 1Malaysia Development Bhd issue. It’s a good start,” the PKR president told more than 1,000 people present at a ceramah in Pontian last night.

“Like everyone else here, I am impatient, too, but we must follow the legal process,” said Anwar.

The Kuala Lumpur High Court ordered Najib to enter his defence in the SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption case involving RM42 million yesterday. 

The former Umno president was charged with seven counts of criminal breach of trust, money-laundering and abuse of power. He will begin his defence from December 3-19.

SRC International is a subsidiary of 1MDB, which transferred some RM42 million to Najib’s accounts.

“But the 1MDB case is not the only scandal. There are others in Felda, Tabung Haji.

“Which is why, you need to ensure Pakatan Harapan defends the Tg Piai seat,” the Port Dickson MP told the crowd.

He said the reason for PH’s lack of progress ever since taking over the government last year was due to the ongoing scandals it needed to clean up.

“We are doing the necessary by tightening corruption laws and ensuring greater transparency in government but this takes time.”

Anwar was among two other senior PH leaders who spoke last night. The other two were Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu and Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin.

But it was Johor exco Dzulkefly Ahmad who struck a chord with the crowd.

“One of the things we did was to stop quotas when it came to distributing low-cost housing,” said Dzulkefly.

Under Barisan Nasional, 20% of the state-subsidised low-cost housing were given to political parties, such as Umno and MCA, to distribute.

“But in the end, we found that some of these units that are meant for B40 households went to division leaders,” said the housing and communications exco.

Meanwhile, Mohamad said PH did not play the race card compared with BN.

“During the Cameron Highlands by-election, they told voters to vote for their candidate because he was a Muslim but here they’re now backing MCA,” said the Kota Raja MP.

“In PH, we never look at race and tell people to vote for someone because he’s Malay or Chinese or Indian. When he’s a PH candidate, he’s a PH candidate,” said the Amanah president.

While it’s a six-cornered fight, the main contest will be between PH’s Karmaine Sardini and BN’s two-time MP Wee Jeck Seng. – November 12, 2019.