This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on September 19, 2017

PUTRAJAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad yesterday questioned Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak over his alleged failure to raise the issue of Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) foreign exchange (forex) losses when Najib was a member of the cabinet in 1993, noting that the matter was brought up at a parliamentary session then.

“Najib should explain why he is only raising this issue now, when before this there was no mention of it (and) he had approved everything [relating] to this,” the former prime minister told reporters after testifying at the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into the BNM forex losses.

Lawyer Datuk Gurdial Singh Nijar, who is holding a watching brief for former finance minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, had pointed out that opposition leader Lim Kit Siang had during a parliamentary session in March 1993 called for the establishment of an RCI into the forex losses but that it was never carried out then.

“(The current) RCI is not about finding out about losses sustained by BNM but it is, instead, about finding a way to make me look bad in the eyes of the public — that during my time as prime minister, RM30 billion was stolen,” Dr Mahathir said.

“But, I think they have not achieved their objective of making me look like one of these kleptocrats who are running the government today,” he added.

Dr Mahathir claimed that the questions that were put to him during yesterday’s hearing were “not relevant” and were more of a tactic to smear his name.

At the hearing itself, Dr Mahathir said: “From time to time, without answering specific questions — questions raised by myself, Najib Razak has raised all sorts of irrelevant issues in order to smear my credibility — just so that the Malaysian public are distracted from the turmoil caused by Najib Razak,” Dr Mahathir said during his testimony.

“It has been 25 years since the forex losses occurred yet Najib via his ‘helpers’ have succeeded in setting up the RCI in less than 25 days, following former assistant BNM governor Datuk Abdul Murad Khalid’s revelation to the media regarding the forex losses,” he added.

Dr Mahathir claimed that, as the prime minister, he had no reason to suspect that BNM had acted against the powers given to it under the law and he had no personal knowledge of the losses or profits in relation to the forex trading.