COMMENT | Some clarification is needed from Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak.

It is either that Salleh is not making any sense or I am just plain dumb, not knowing how on earth he is differentiating what is fake from what isn’t. If I am dumb, I am sure I am not alone. At least I will have the company of Kee Thuan Chye.

These days, whenever you find a minister not making sense, you just have to go back to Kee’s latest book, “You want this Goonvernment Ah?” and see what else the same minister had uttered in the past. Thanks to Kee’s hard work, his book is set to become our local WikiGoonpedia.

And lo, I found on Page 47 that Salleh had previously blamed it on Malaysian consumers for having the “slowest average mobile internet speed in the Asia-Pacific region”. We are lagging behind even countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, not to mention Singapore.

Now, Salleh comes around and tells a group of international journalists that the US Department of Justice filings on 1MDB won't be considered fake news, right after his deputy, Jailani Johari, claimed that any 1MDB-related information unverified by the government is fake news.

I don’t know any more about who is now spouting fake news.

Going by seniority and taking Salleh at his word, it means the government is now willing to verify and acknowledge the facts presented by the DOJ.

Does that mean that there was indeed a 1MDB scandal involving billions of ringgit, implicating both Low Taek Jho and Malaysian Official No 1 (MO1), of so large a magnitude that even the US government admitted that it is the biggest kleptocracy scandal they have ever come across?

And since another fellow cabinet minister, Abdul Rahman Dahlan (photo), has also confirmed that MO1 is indeed the sitting prime minister, what are we waiting for?

Since the DOJ has again stated that the US$250 million used to purchase Equanimity was from funds allegedly misappropriated from 1MDB, what is Salleh, as a minister, doing about it?

What we do know is that the minister’s statement immediately puts others in bad light. Why was nothing done about the allegedly misappropriated money? Why aren’t the police hunting for the infamous Jho Low, especially since the Malay Rulers had urged the authorities to step up on the investigation and nab the culprits in order to close the case?

Did Salleh also sell out Mohamed Apandi Ali with his statement, since the attorney-general had cleared Najib of any wrongdoing?

Didn’t we also learn the word “kleptocrat” from the DOJ filing itself? So, since the DOJ filing is not fake, can Salleh now tell us who is the kleptocrat referred to in the civil asset forfeiture suit?

Perhaps Salleh knows a bit more than most of us on the kleptocrat and 1MDB’s money. As such, we want to hear from him, especially now that we can safely assume that we heard him correctly – that the 1MDB scandal is indeed not “fake news” based on the DOJ’s civil suit.

We have just read about the seizure of Equanimity and about Najib’s own stepson, Rizal Aziz, having to surrender millions in US dollars from the proceeds of the film, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, to the US government. Surely this is not fake news, is it?

Salleh also said yesterday that no one should be afraid of the Anti-Fake News Bill 2018 if truly innocent.

Going by this logic, then Jho Low should not be in hiding now. He should instead return to Penang to direct the next general election – but formally this time.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.