Rafizi was too loud, Nazri tells Parliament

The de facto law minister explains why the PKR man is in legal trouble over his exposes.

KUALA LUMPUR: Justice may be blind, but it has ears sharp enough to tell the difference between the squeal of a whistle and the roar of a trumpet.

That appeared to be de facto law minister Nazri Aziz’s message to Parliament today when he was trying to explain why PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli could not use the Whistle Blowers Act 2010 as a shield against prosecution over his exposes of the NFCorp scandal.

Rafizi and former bank employee Johari Mohamad are facing charges under the Banking and Financial Institution Act (Bafia) over their exposure of bank documents related to the accounts held by the National Feedlot Corporation.

“They are trumpet blowers, not whistle blowers,” Nazri said in response to a question from Khalid Ibrahim (PKR-Bandar Tun Razak).

He said the Whistle Blowers Act was not meant to protect law breakers.

“You blow the trumpet to the whole world. So what protection do you need?

“This act cannot protect those who commit a wrongdoing. It protects whistle blowers. We can’t protect him if he breached Bafia.”

Responding to Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan), who asked for a further explanation, Nazri said the Official Secrets Act and Bafia both described the kind of information that could not be divulged to the public.