Having been severely attacked over the 1 MDB scandal and the USD700 million deposits in the Prime Minister’s personal bank accounts, the government has resorted to desperate moves of blocking whistleblower site Sarawak Report, suspending The Edge Weekly and The Edge Financial Daily. The Police have applied for arrest warrant against the Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown.
Datuk Seri Najib Razak has also tried to divert attention from the 1 MDB scandal by talking about political funding reform.
Yesterday, he has called for open warfare with the imaginary DAP’s Red Bean Army online, urging Umno members to flood the Internet in a war of words to counter what he viewed as “false views” about the party and himself.
This latest revival of the Umno-MCA grandfather’s story of Red Bean Army is just another desperate move by Najib to divert attention from the 1MDB woes that he, his cronies and 1MDB are facing.
But such desperate move will not work because the Red Bean Army lie that was manufactured two years ago did not last long and had died of natural death.
Lies cannot last and truth will prevail. The Red Bean Army is a figment of Umno-MCA’s imagination. The party does not fund any network of online activists.
In fact, in July 2013, Communications and Multimedia Deputy Minister had admitted to Parliament that it did not know who the Red Bean Army was or whether there was a Red Bean Army despite all the allegations flying around both in cyberspace and the Barisan Nasional-controlled media.
Red Bean Army lie revival by Najib can best described with the Chinese proverb “self deceiving and deceiving others (自欺欺人).
As the Prime Minister, Najib certainly has official intelligence that will tell him that Red Bean Army does not exist. His revival of the Red Bean Army lie is therefore self deceiving as well as deceiving others.
He should accept the fact that the online critics are just individual, ordinary Malaysians who want to know the whole truth on all issues surrounding 1MDB.
Teresa Kok