KUALA LUMPUR: DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang has been criticised as “unprincipled” following his dissatisfaction with the Royal Commission of Inquiry’s (RCI) report on its probe into Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) foreign exchange (forex) losses back in the early 1990’s.
Former DAP vice-chairman Tunku Abdul Aziz Tunku Ibrahim said Lim’s position on the scandal has changed after forming political alliances with former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his ousted deputy Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“Back then, this (RCI on the forex losses) is what Lim had wanted. He wanted the prime minister (Dr Mahathir) to be investigated.
“Dr Mahathir was guilty back then because he was Lim’s enemy. What is Lim practising is dishonest and unprincipled politics,” Tunku Abdul Aziz said when contacted today.
He was commenting on Lim’s move to link a collective responsibility for the forex losses to the cabinet back then, and his allegations that the RCI was held to persecute Dr Mahathir and Anwar.
“Lim should have accepted the report as it is because he himself had wanted the matter (forex losses) to go public years ago.
“It is a different story today now that they are friends. If this is how it goes, it means that they (Lim and his political allies) are dishonest and without morals,” Tunku Abdul Aziz said.
The RCI, in its 524-page report tabled in Parliament yesterday, stated that Anwar, who was also then the finance minister, had misled the government and concealed the actual losses suffered by BNM. The commission also said Dr Mahathir had approved Anwar’s “misleading statements”.
It also had lodged a police report on the same day calling for investigations to be carried out to unearth whether a criminal breach of trust, fraud and cheating had been committed with regard to the losses.
Following an exposé by the New Straits Times, where former BNM assistant governor, Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid had revealed that the central bank had actually suffered US$10 billion in losses, and the RCI was set up subsequently.