COMMENT It won’t be long before Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairperson Hasan Ariffin starts to reel back his throwaway line, “Jangan la. saya pun nak cari makan jugak.” (“Please don’t, I need to earn a living too.”)

Hasan secreted this remark when pressed him on whether he would call Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak for questioning by the committee on the 1MDB issue.

It won’t be a surprise if he moves swiftly to retrieve it because of its potential for damaging interpretations.

Political salons will hum with chatter on whether the remark was a Freudian slip or not.

Speculation mills will churn and talk that Hasan was chosen to chair the PAC for just the reason his remark had indicated of his suitability - his pliability to pressure from higher quarters - will gain credence.

His predecessor as chair of PAC, Nur Jazlan Mohamed ( photo ), had gone on record as intending to call the PM before the committee “if necessary”.

Nur Jazlan liked to suggest that he was a breath of fresh air in Umno. Doubtless, his stated intent to call the PM for questioning was meant to convey his willingness to match deed to the reformist image he coveted.

Not surprisingly, his replacement as PAC chair, Hasan, was pressed by a ravenous media to see if he would be as gung ho as Nur Jazlan and decide to call in the PM for questioning.

A Nur Jazlan-chaired PAC had stalled in its probe of the 1MDB imbroglio when the MP for Pulai was promoted to deputy home minister in late July by Najib.

Three other PAC members - Reezal Merican Naina Merican, Mas Ermieyati Samsudin and Wilfred Madius Tangau - were similarly elevated to the cabinet in what was interpreted as a preemptive move by the PM to hold the 1MDB hounds at bay.

PAC’s deputy chairperson, Dr Tan Seng Giaw of DAP, described the abrupt promotion of the four former members of this committee as a move that “deliberately sabotaged” the inquiry that at the time of the four’s elevation was poised to question senior executives of the state wealth fund.

The fund is immersed in colossal debt and is the subject of a national controversy that looks nowhere near waning.

Hasan’s “cari makan” remark will set tongues wagging. In fact, it is just what critics of the way the 1MDB issue has been handled may have been waiting for to stoke the controversy further.

Leaving bad enough alone?

Hasan’s indiscretion is the sort one faces with a rent garment: the more one fusses with it the worse the tear becomes. Will he be stoic enough to leave bad enough alone?

He has on his side Mohd Nazri Aziz, Tourism Minister, who has a knack for interjecting in just these affrays where his bent for comments both truculent and frivolous can brighten up a bad passage.

With his taste for preemptive strikes that can steal a detractor’s thunder, Nazri ( photo ) periodically has hit out at the arch-critic of 1MDB, former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

These attacking forays have served to remind the public of Mahathir’s misdeeds during his long tenure as PM that are seen as having paved the way to the country’s present dilemmas.

Perhaps, Nazri will race to Hasan’s rescue but he has been quiet of late.

In any case, the situation is tailor-made for his intervention.

The minister who has said a depreciating ringgit is a boon to tourism and that the global TV channels’ coverage of the Bersih marches on the eve of the Merdeka Day celebrations were a boost to the country’s profile in tourism brochures can be counted on to resort to lateral thinking as rescue for Hasan in his current straits.

All said, the 1MDB issue will not go away.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.