KUALA LUMPUR: The government should open investigations into cases of "selective prosecution" involving politicians to allow action to be taken against the wrongdoers, Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said.
He said there was nothing preventing the current government from instructing the Attorney General's Chambers to do so but added that Putrajaya should be fair by not excluding those in Barisan Nasional in the investigations.
"The current prime minister is from Umno, so do a meeting and give the instruction. Take action but be professional.
"About the ringgit value, it began to decline after the report on DoJ (US Department of Justice) came out. That's when it started and has continued until now. We're still not recovered," he said during the last round of his debate with former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on Thursday.
Anwar was referring to an international report saying the ringgit started to decline after the DoJ started an investigation on Najib's corruption scandals back in 2016.
According to the report, the probe was focusing on US properties that were purchased by shell companies allegedly owned by Najib's stepson Riza Aziz as well as money in the former prime minister's personal bank account.
At the time, ringgit was Asia's worst-performing currency caused mostly by the political scandal involving 1MDB and plunging commodity prices, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier, Najib had asked for Anwar's view on why the Pakatan Harapan government did not go through with the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) onto the 1990s foreign exchange scandal.
"Where's the forensic on this? Not one person has been held responsible.
"At the time, the loss was valued at RM33 billion but today, the value would have been RM150 billion," Najib said, in relation to Anwar's earlier suggestion in the debate for the government to conduct a *forensic audit on the financial troubles faced by Sapura Energy Bhd.
During his turn, Anwar had asked Najib to state the reasons why the transformation plan during his premiership was unsuccessful.
Najib then responded saying it was unfair for the former deputy prime minister to pick on one thing while ignoring Malaysia's economic growth at the time, which he claimed was among the highest in the region.
"At the time (during his premiership), our foreign direct investment was among the highest and our stock market experienced a record long bull run.
"One example I would give, when I took over Khazanah, we had RM34 billion and by 2018 it was RM114 billion but 22 months after PH took over, it went down to RM79 billion. Why? Because the policies were wrong.
"Don't let small things blind you. If we want to fight corruption, why did we have an AG who was a political appointee? Don't appoint an AG (Tan Sri Tommy Thomas) who described himself as a political appointee.
"Never in our country's history has an AG resigned when there was a change of prime minister. This stops us from fighting corruption," he said.