Parliament will not interfere with PAC probe on 1MDB – Speaker

KUALA LUMPUR: Parliament will not interfere with the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) investigations into claims that the Auditor-General's (AG) report on 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) had been tampered, said Dewan Rakyat Speaker Datuk Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof.

"The PAC has a big say on what they look into. We have the PAC and as the Speaker, I don't interfere with it. If I get involved, it will be untidy,” he told reporters at the Roundtable on Electoral Reform: The Way Forward for Free and Fair Elections, at Parliament House yesterday.

Mohamad Ariff said this in referring to DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang's proposal to refer former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee for tampering with the AG's report on 1MDB.

The revelation on the tampering was made by PAC deputy chairman Wong Kah Woh who said that the final audit report was ordered to be amended by “a certain individual”.

On Sunday, Auditor-General Madinah Mohamad had released a statement claiming that Najib and several key civil servants including former AuditorGeneral Tan Sri Ambrin Buang had tampered the document.

However, the allegation was denied by former PAC chairman Datuk Seri Hasan Ariffin and Ambrin.

Earlier, Mohamad Ariff had attended the opening ceremony of the electoral reform roundtable.

In his speech, he said that the end result of any electoral reform is not merely to have clean, free and fair elections but also must have a robust multiparty democracy at work.

“It is not enough that we believe in democracy. We must make democracy work,” he said.

The roundtable, which ends today, will discuss the electoral system including constituency delineation, suffrage of voting and election management.

Present at the roundtable yesterday were Election Commission chairman Azhar Azizan Harun, Electoral Reform Committee chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, Bersih 2.0 (an electoral reform movement) chairman Thomas Fann, Chairman of United Kingdom's Election Commission Sir John Holmes, and Kofi Annan Foundation president Alan Doss. - Bernama