The government’s refusal to detail Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s highly publicised vacation in the United States last December is akin to giving him a “blank cheque” to spend as much taxpayers’ money as he wants, an MP said today.

Despite repeated questions in Parliament about the trip, which Najib cut short to tend to the Kelantan floods, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Shahidan Kassim merely replied that Najib had spent “according to what is allowed” and “appropriately”, DAP’s Seremban MP Anthony Loke Siew Fook told a press conference today.