(Oct 19): Deputy Home Minister Datuk Nur Jazlan today urged members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to give their full cooperation to Datuk Hasan Arifin, who has been nominated for the top post in the bipartisan panel.

Wishing Hasan all the best, Nur Jazlan, the former PAC chief, believed that the Rompin MP would be elected to the post.

"He was nominated as the PAC chairman and I'm confident that he will be chosen and will carry out his duties well.

"As the former chairman, I pray that he gets good cooperation from both parties that are members of the PAC, so that the work of PAC which was put on hold previously may continue.

"And members of the PAC should also give their full cooperation to him, the way they cooperated with me," he told reporters in Kuala Lumpur after speaking at a luncheon with the Malaysian-Bosnia and Herzegovina Business Council.

Hasan, who has been an MP for just five months, will have a big task ahead of him as PAC was in the midst of investigating state investment arm 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Proceedings were frozen as Nur Jazlan and three other members were appointed as minister and deputy ministers in a Cabinet reshuffle in July.

The reshuffle and its effect of temporarily halting the PAC's inquiry into 1MDB drew outcry and claims of attempts by Putrajaya to delay the probe.

Hasan clinched the Rompin seat during by-election in May, after former MP Tan Sri Jamaluddin Jarjis died in a helicopter crash.

Hasan, 62, formerly served as Pahang’s deputy menteri besar between 1995 to 1999, and was a four-term state assemblyman in Pahang for the Tioman and Bukit Ibam state constituencies.

He is also seen as a close associate of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, the chairman of 1MDB's board of advisors. – The Malaysian Insider