Kit Siang: I have not incited anyone with warning Malaysia not to become another Sri Lanka, but ready for jail if…

GELANG PATAH, May 22 – Lim Kit Siang today said he was prepared to go to jail “for warning Malaysia not to become another Sri Lanka” but questioned former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak if he was prepared to do the same for bringing Malaysia “infamy, ignominy or iniquity worldwide as kleptocracy at its worst”.

Police have started investigating the DAP Member of Parliament for Iskandar Puteri under Section 505(c) of the Penal Code for public mischief/incitement following a statement he issued drawing parallels between what is happening in Sri Lanka and how Malaysia would have to guard against a similar fate.

He is also being investigated under Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1988 for improper use of network facilities or network service.

Section 505 (c) says: “Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement, rumour or report with intent to incite or which is likely to incite any class or community of persons to commit any offence against any other class or community of persons, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to two years or with fine or with both.”

Listing out the also full terms of offences under Section 233, Lim said he has not incited “anyone, any class or community of persons nor have I any intent to incite anyone, any class or community of persons.

“I have also not created or initiated any transmission which is “obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person”, but I am prepared to go to jail for warning Malaysians not to become another Sri Lanka.”

In a statement issued today, Kit Siang also recalled a chapter from Nazir Razak’s book “What’s In A Name” relating a story involving Najib: “When we were all still young my brothers and I once trooped into my father’s office with a request to make: we asked him to build a swimming pool in the grounds of Seri Taman. My eldest brother Najib was the ringleader, corralling the rest of us to make the case, standing in front of my father’s desk in his study. My father listened to our proposal carefully and then calmly dismissed it. ‘How would it look,’ he asked, eyebrows raised, ‘if the Prime Minister spent public money on building a swimming pool for his family?”

Kit Siang said, “Najib has not learnt from his father, Tun Razak, the second Malaysian Prime Minister, or we would not have graduated from a swimming pool to the 1MDB.”

He said Malaysia had lost its way to becoming a world-class great nation and that it instead of “becoming  another Sri Lanka” it should return to the nation-building principles of the country that the founding fathers had “agreed in the Malaysian Constitution — constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, rule of law, good governance, respect for human rights and national unity from our multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural diversity.”

–WE