By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Sunday, Dec. 15, 1985:
Call on Tan Sri Abu Talib to resign as Attorney-General if he wants to carry out a feud with the Auditor-General over the BMF Inquiry Committee final report
After carrying out a feud with the Bar Council, the Attorney-General Tan Sri Abu Talib, is now conducting a feud with the Auditor-General, Tan Sri Ahamd Nordin, over the BMF Inquiry Committee final report.
Tan Sri Abu Talib should resign as Attorney-General if he wants to carry out his feud with Tan Sri Ahamd Nordin, in pursuing his view that the BMF Inquiry Committee final report should not be made public, because
Firstly, the Attorney-General will be going against the public pledge of the Prime Minster, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamed, that the report of the Inquiry Committee would be made public;
Secondly, the Attorney-General would be defying the Finance Minister, Daim Zainuddin, and his predecessor, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who had repeatedly told Parliament that the BMF Inquiry Committee final report would be made public, provided that it does not infringe the secretary provisions of the Banking Act. Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin said the Inquiry Committee had sought the counsel of a Queen’s Council to ensure that the final report omits all references which could be caught by the secretary provisions of the Banking Act.
Thirdly, the Attorney-General would be setting himself against the mainstream of public opinion in wanting the final report of the BMF Inquiry Committee to be made public, and in the process, he is not worthy to serve in a government whose slogan is ‘clean, efficient and trustworthy’.
Fourthly, the Attorney-General has exceeded his powers and duties as Attorney-General in conducting a feud with Tan Sri Ahmad Nordin and the BMF Inquiry Committee.
Who is Tan Sri Abu Talib to state that he does not want to hear anything more from the Committee of Inquiry because it no longer exist.
The Malaysian people does not want to hear anything more from the Attorney-General about his views that the BMF final report should be suppressed.
As both the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister had pledged to release the BMF final report, the Attorney-General should resign if he disagrees. Or is he now using his Attorney-General’s powers and office to get the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister to break their pledges to make the BMF Inquiry Committee final report public.
I also ask the Prime Minster to direct the Attorney-General to shut-up, and not to usurp the powers of the Cabinet to decide whether the BMF final report should be made public. The decision is not with the Bank Bumiputra, but the Malaysian Cabinet, for it is the Prime Minister and not the Bank Bumiputra which announced the details of the Ahmad Nordin BMF Inquiry Committee, both with regards to its compositions, its terms of reference and the promise to make its report public.
The Cabinet cannot run away from its responsibility by pretending that the final prerogative of deciding whether to make the report public rests with Bank Bumiputra. The Cabinet would merely be using the Bank Bumiputra to perform the latest ‘cover up’ in the $2.5 billion BMF loans scandal, if it allows Bank Bumiputra, a government creature, to make the final decision on the fate of the report.