20 Apr 2024, 16:52 Kuching
20 Apr 2024, 09:52 London
Sarawak Report (SR) should be investigated for threatening national security, a minister said today after the website disclosed what it claimed to be a classified Auditor-General’s report.
Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak said the whistleblower website’s claim, if true, would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act 1972 (OSA).
“The recent declaration that Sarawak Report has in its possession of a document classified under OSA warrants investigation by the police.
“Such an investigation needs to be undertaken urgently and expeditiously to prevent further leakages of official secrets documents which may put the country in security jeopardy,” Salleh told Malay Mail Online when contacted today
This Minister for Fun has acknowledged the report is real, which gets rid of one bit of nonsense at least – the allegation that we had “forged” it.
However, he ought not conflate ‘national security’ with the security of criminals on the run from the law.
There are plainly still good folk in Malaysia, who have not yet been murdered or sacked or put in prison, who have a clear enough sense of right and wrong that they have refused to accept blatant abuses of power.
One such blatant abuse was to slap an official secrets order on what ought to have been and was promised would be a public report by the Auditor General into what has gone wrong with 1MDB.
It is in the national interest for these facts to be widely known, in order to prevent future such debacles and ‘disappearances’ of billions of dollars of public money.
It is only in the interests of the criminals responsible to cover it up and make it secret.
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