Dismissing the protective law as a mere facade with an overall effect of discouraging people from coming forward with incriminating information, Rafizi said he knew from the very beginning there was nothing in the Act actually meant to protect whistleblowers.
“I’ve never asked to be protected as a whistleblower. The law is just a facade, it is cosmetic because I have compared, as early as 2010, our Act to the ones practised in the rest of the world.
“I’ve compared it with India, the United Kingdom and Australia among others. All of the (whistleblower) acts there have a clause which allows whistleblowers to go to the media or politicians in the interests of the public,” said the PKR secretary-general to FMT.
“But he (Nazri) also needs to recognise that I’m not a whistleblower per se.
“It’s the people behind me, your faceless citizens and your faceless officers who continue to take risks and provide information that allows people like me to serve the public by speaking out on their behalf.”
Nazri, in an exclusive interview with FMT earlier this week, had said that an individual cannot be protected under the Act if he or she failed to refer the information in their possession to the relevant authorities.
To this Rafizi said: “Only in Malaysia do we have an Act which says that we have to go to the authorities. But if you think about it, that is an oxymoron in the first place.
“Why do people choose to be a whistleblower? It’s because they don’t trust the authorities which may have been compromised. That’s why they decide that they have to find another way.
“That is also why all the other whistleblower Acts around the world actually have that very important clause which allows the public to go to what they call the ‘competent parties’, which usually refer to politicians or the media.”
Nazri, in the interview, had also labelled Rafizi as an attention seeker who, in the effort to obtain “cheap publicity”, had landed himself into a mess he could not get out of. He said he was not a whistleblower but a “trumpet blower”.
“Nazri can say whatever he wants, I don’t think anyone bothers with what he has to say.
“Clearly whatever he says is out of touch with where society is moving towards,” responded Rafizi.
The PKR lawmaker has been charged with two offences under the Official Secrets Act after exposing classified documents linked to 1MDB and the Armed Forces Fund Board (LTAT).
He claimed the documents, said to be from the audit report on 1MDB, proved his allegations that the sovereign wealth fund had not made payments to LTAT, resulting in late gratuity payments for veterans.
1MDB and LTAT have denied his claims.