“It was a cover up. I could tell by the dust jacket.” - Jarod Kintz, ‘This Book is Not FOR SALE’

So, after months of waiting for some sort of smoking gun from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, we discover that it is not possible for Tony Pua to be 80 percent pregnant.

While the Najib Abdul Razak regime bleats about how the secrecy of the committee enabled them to work diligently in gathering the facts, political insiders from both sides of the political divide tell me, that the committee was a leaky faucet that the Najib security apparatus was desperate to plug.

Of course, there really is no need for a smoking gun. Earlier this year the “The office of Swiss attorney-general Michael Lauber said it had formally asked Malaysia to help with its probes into possible violations of Swiss laws related to bribery of foreign officials, misconduct in public office, money laundering and criminal mismanagement at the fund.” Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zaid Hamidi did take to the fact that the Swiss went public with this.

In addition, just recently, The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority claimed that these scandals were “clear cases of corruption”. So what we have here are (contravening Swiss law), “bribery of public official, misconduct in public office, money laundering and criminal mismanagement”.

The Swiss believe that “the monies believed to have been misappropriated would have been earmarked for investment in economic and social development projects in Malaysia” and all this involved “a systematic course of action carried out by means of complex financial structures”.

While pro-Najib supporters claim that these so called allegations are part of an elaborate Jewish conspiracy carried out by Swiss, American, Singaporean - I have lost count of how many foreign Jewish proxies there are in the world or in Malaysia for that matter - the reality is that 1MDB for months have claimed that it has done no “wrong”.

This PAC report obviously confirms this and apparently with bipartisan support. While DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang, advises us to read between the lines, the fact is that we should not have to read between the lines and the participation of the opposition in this charade, not only damages their credibility, it further encourages the political shadow play that dominates the discourse in this country.

Sometimes I think it would have been better if Tony Pua had resigned from the PAC and debated Arul Kanda Kandasamy.

At least it would have denied the smug rejoinder of former PAC member Reezal Merican Naina Merican who said “the people should accept the findings because the body was non-partisan and made up of both backbenchers and opposition MPs” and the weasel-worded contradictory rhetoric of Pua and PAC deputy chairperson Dr Tan Seng Giaw about the culpability of prime minister Najib Abdul Razak.

According to the PAC chairperson Hasan Arifin, the PAC investigated every allegation that “was hurled at the prime minister over a period of 18 months and the results endorsed by all, was that there was no substance to those allegations”. PAC member Tony Pua meanwhile says that, “I would say this... Instead of saying PAC cleared the prime minister, the way to say it is PAC failed to clear the prime minister.

“This is because we were not given any documents to investigate, hence, we were unable to clear the prime minister even we if wanted to.”

Cannot claim plausible deniability

Prime Minster Najib cannot even claim plausible deniability in the 1MDB fiasco because we have someone like “former 1MDB chief executive officer Shahrol Azral Ibrahim Halmi claimed that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had refused the revaluation of assets in 1MDB’s joint-venture with PetroSaudi International (PSI) despite concerns raised by the 1MDB board of directors”.

I fully expect a retraction in the coming days from this former chief executive that the prime minister did no wrong and further former and current personalities from 1MDB holding press conferences extolling the innocence of the prime minister.

However, is there really any use in going over the report? When committee members choose to spin and the average Malaysian is told to read between the lines. Many have suggested that the best option is to wait for the “foreign investigations” to conclude which would further batter the credibility of the Najib regime.

But this would not change anything. The Najib regime is determinedly going down the fascist state route. The arrests of political opposition members like Rafizi Ramli, the harassment of oppositional political parties, the use of the state’s security apparatus as a tool of suppression, is evidence that no law, either domestic or foreign is applicable to this regime.

Why bother waiting for the auditor-general’s report? By all indications what we will be witness to is another whitewash not worth the official secrecy stamp placed on it. It will be another watered-down report that points to mismanagement, sets out recommendations, but most importantly clears the Umno prime minister of any wrongdoing.

There will of course be whispers of an original document but this will lost in a haze of conspiracy theories and contradictory statements from our opposition. The Najib regime will take the opportunity to declare innocence and recommend the nation to “move on”.

After all this is supposedly the final word on this sordid saga. While the former prime minister and his motley allies continue to wage their war against the Najib regime, the average citizen is left wondering who they can trust, who has their best interests at heart or plainly speaking who speaks for them.

While the country continues to slide downhill, the naked emperor has just received another fig leaf to cover his nakedness. I wish the opposition did not hand him the leaf. Sometimes being left out in the cold is better than staying in the hearth to throw out embers from the fireplace out the window hoping to start of fire.

As Tony Pua reminds us Malaysians who mudah lupa, “So, it is all for show. Same thing (with) the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC),” In the end all Malaysians are left with is a show and not a very good one at that.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.