An invitation has been extended to Najib Abdul Razak to attend the “Save Malaysia” roundtable conference next week, which Lim Kit Siang said would provide the prime minister with a chance for a fresh start.

"What better forum for Najib and his cabinet to make a fresh start to cleanse and purge Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of being regarded worldwide as a global kleptocracy than the 'Save Malaysia' roundtable," he added in a blog posting.

The DAP veteran said the roundtable secretary Liew Chin Tong, who is DAP's Kluang MP, had sent an invitation to the conference to Najib, as well as to other political and civil society leaders.

At the Feb 7 conference, Lim said the prime minister can propose his strategy to liberate Malaysia from its purported reputation as a "global kleptocracy".

He said it also provided Najib a chance to listen to political and civil society leaders on the best way to stop the country from heading towards becoming a global kleptocracy and a failed state.

"I hope Najib and the cabinet ministers who are invited will have the courage and patriotism to turn up to fully participate in the roundtable,” he added.

Lim said there have been numerous new developments to the 1MDB scandal in the past month, including the jailing of a fourth former banker in Singapore for crimes related to the 1MDB scandal.

He also pointed out that for the first time, the 1MDB scandal has been cited by Transparency International (TI) as the reason for Malaysia's decrease in score and ranking in the TI Corruption Perception Index 2016.

Malaysia had slid down one rank on the index in 2016, sharing the 55th spot with Croatia.

Its CPI score had also dropped from 50 to 49 on a scale of 0-100, with 100 being perceived to be very clean and 0 being perceived as highly corrupt.

Lim said the first step to “save Malaysia” is to end the “global pretence” that the international multi-billion dollar 1MDB scandal had been resolved and ceased to be an issue.

“In his meeting with some 1,000 Umno divisional leaders and selected representatives of NGOs on June 14, 2015, Najib gave an assurance that the controversy surrounding the state investment arm 1MDB will be resolved by year-end.

“In his 2016 New Year message on Dec 31, 2015, Najib told Malaysians that his RM50 billion 1MDB and RM2.6 billion donation twin mega scandals had been resolved and were no more issues.

“Najib could not be more wrong, as illustrated by the decision yesterday of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) ordering Coutts & Co, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, to surrender 6.5 million francs (RM29.1 million) in illegal profits from transactions linked to 1MDB.

“This is the first 1MDB-linked world headlines for the month of February 2017 and certainly, it will not be the last whether for this month or this year,” he added.

For the 31 days in January, Lim said, a news portal carried more than 200 articles linked to the 1MDB scandal.

Najib has denied any wrongdoing in the 1MDB scandal, and has also been cleared of criminal misconduct by attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali.

The prime minister has also blamed the corruption allegations against him on those conspiring to topple him from power.