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KUALA LUMPUR – DAP veteran and former chairman Lim Kit Siang says he is prepared to go to jail for “warning Malaysia not to become another Sri Lanka” in response to police initiating an investigation on his tweet which apparently linked the situation in Malaysia to the economically and politically wrecked South Asian country.
The Iskandar Puteri MP compared his stance to Datuk Seri Najib Razak and asked if the former prime minister who has been convicted of graft-related charges over the 1MDB affair is prepared to be jailed as well.
“I have not incited anyone, any class or community of persons nor have I any intent to incite anyone, any class or community of persons,” Lim said in a statement today.
Referring to Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1988, which deals with “improper use of network facilities or network service, etc”, for which he is investigated, he denied that he had committed wrongdoing in the offences stated therein.
“I have also not created or initiated any transmission which is ‘obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person’, but I am prepared to go to jail for warning Malaysians not to become another Sri Lanka,” he said.
“But is the former prime minister, Najib Razak, prepared to go to jail for Malaysia’s infamy, ignominy and iniquity worldwide as ‘kleptocracy at its worst’?”
On Friday, Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Abd Jalil Hassan had said that an investigation paper has been opened over a tweet by Lim that allegedly contained a statement that could threaten public order.
He said that the screenshot of the tweet had gone viral on WhatsApp since Thursday.
Besides the Communications and Multimedia Act, the investigation is also being carried out under Section 505(c) of the Penal Code, which relates to “statements conducing to public mischief”.
Lim was believed to have issued a statement titled “Will the houses of the prime minister and ministers of Malaysia be set on fire by angry protestors as had happened in Sri Lanka last week”.
He recalled a biographical memory penned by Najib’s younger brother Tan Sri Nazir Razak on their father Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, turning down the brothers’ request to have a swimming pool in their house when he was prime minister.
“Najib has not learnt from his father, Tun Razak, the second Malaysian prime minister, or we would not have graduated from a swimming pool to the 1MDB ‘kleptocracy at its worst’ and Malaysia lost its way from becoming a world-class great nation,” Lim said.
He added that to become a “world-class great nation” instead of becoming another Sri Lanka or Philippines, Malaysia must return to the nation-building principles its founding fathers had agreed to in the Malaysian constitution.
Saddled by colossal debts, soaring prices and an acute shortage of basic commodities, Sri Lanka has been hit by widespread mob violence and attacks on government leaders, with prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa forced to resign from his position.
The country’s Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe has recently announced that there will be no debt servicing until the country is able to restructure its US$51 billion (RM200 billion) external debt. – The Vibes, May 22, 2022