Abdul Taib Mahmud’s claim he will not cooperate with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) probe against him shows he is not only above the MACC, but the prime minister as well, the DAP says.

Party supremo Lim Kit Siang said the Sarawak chief minister’s response yesterday was a slap in the face for caretaker Prime Minister Najib Razak’s purported fight against corruption.

lim kit siang story Najib needed to act on the matter to prove his anti-corruption credentials that he promised to uphold in signing the Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) Election Integrity Pledge on Feb 20, Lim said in a statement today.

“Otherwise, Taib would have  delivered a coup de grace to Najib’s pretensions of elevating ‘fighting corruption’ as the top agenda of his transformation programme when Taib is not only mightier than MACC, but also the prime minister.

Lim challenged Najib to defy Taib’s call and ask the MACC to proceed.

“The ball is now in Najib’s court. Is MACC going to back down or will Najib direct MACC to proceed to open full investigations, or even better, establish a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into all the corruption allegations which have been made against Taib and his family?”

He said although initiating a RCI was now beyond Najib’s power as a caretaker PM, Pakatan was willing to support him to make the exception.

'So much for integrity pledge'

Taib was responding to the MACC’s probe into allegations raised in an explosive intrepid video by international NGO Global Witness released last month.

"They (MACC) don't deserve my cooperation because they have been naughty... and they have not been honest," the CM told reporters when met after attending the BN supreme council meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

NONE The MACC said they have initiated a probe into the video that claims to show relatives of Taib engaged in backroom negotiations to abuse logging licences.

However Taib has denied the allegations in the video and called it “ normal business talk ”.

Lim said Najib’s failure to act on Taib only makes his TI-M pledge a “meaningless public relations exercise scripted by Najib’s political consultants and image-builders to score political points in the 13GE”.

He said it destroys the credibility of the TI-M document.

“The photograph of the Najib Razak flamboyantly signing the (TI-M pledge) flanked by Umno/BN leaders, with the Abdul Taib Mahmud, the bete’ noire of international anti-corruption campaigns, glaring malevolently from the back and the MCA president Chua Soi Lek in a somnambulant pose, will go down as one of the most unforgettable pics of the 13th general elections,” he quipped.

'Naughty and dishonest'? What say you, MACC?

Until MACC acts justly, Taib will stay untouchable