Al Jazeera’s 101 East program that featured Mary Ann Jolley’s interview with Najib Razak showed what a scoundrel Najib is. Not only that but he is a scumbag and a sleazeball.
As Malaysiakini columnist Mariam Mokhtar wrote: “Jolley's interview gave us a glimpse of a man who still thinks he can do no wrong”.
Twenty-four seconds into the interview and Najib started his blame game.
In fact, he introduced three characters – and like it or not, they will now have the spotlight shining brightly on them:
When Jolley asked Najib should not he know more where the money was coming from, he gave an excuse that given the “commitment”/“assurance” from the late King Abdullah – he had “assumed” everything was fine.
He reiterated: “I want to say this – that the only reason why I accept it because I had the assurance from, you know, King Abdullah that he would support me and the subsequent initial donations did come from the Ministry of Finance of Saudi and I assume that subsequent donations would also come from sources connected to the Saudi” (4:55).
In his own words, he said he “assumed” the money banked into his personal account was “a genuine donation”!
Najib then claimed that the $27 million 22-carat pink diamond pendant “was a gift given by” Sheikh Mansour, the UAE prince and IPIC chairperson – “but subsequently (his) wife did not receive it” (9:43).
He repeated: “As far as I’m concerned when it was presented initially to me, it was presented as a gift from Sheikh Mansour, okay. If I knew it was coming from 1MDB money, I wouldn’t accept it at all” (10:25).
And Sheikh Mansour’s brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (or referred to by Najib as MBZ), according to Najib, had indicated his desire to invest in Riza Aziz’s movie – never mind that Najib’s stepson had zero experience producing films.
Najib of course, defended Riza: “MBZ, Mohamad bin Zayed, err, told him (Riza) in my presence that we are going to invest in your movies, okay – so, we assume that whatever investment is going to come from err, Abu Dhabi. So as far as I’m concerned it was a commercial arrangement” (13:42).
MBZ must be an idiot because Riza decided to use the money to purchase $100 million worth of assets around the world.
There must be a lot of suckers on this planet. So gullible. And stupid.
Yesterday, I presented my fifth speech from my Competent Communication manual, Round 50 – it was titled “In Seventh Heaven”.
The Zuellig Pharma SA Toastmasters Club saw only seven of us participating – but it was a cozy meeting nonetheless. And what mattered is that we had speeches and evaluations.