MP SPEAKS | The admission by the Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah that top ministry officials were in the dark about Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Khairuddin Aman Razali's quarantine violation until last week, is quite a shocker.
Equally astounding is that an internal investigation into the events following the minister’s July 7 return from Turkey had been kept a secret from the public.
At yesterday’s press conference, Noor Hisham admitted that he, along with the ministry’s deputy director-general and head of infectious diseases, were not informed about the matter until it made the news.
He said he had instructed an internal investigation and had received the full report of what happened on the ground.
Khairuddin has established quite a number of new political records – including having some 50,000 people signing an online petition asking him to resign as minister.
When Khairuddin’s violation of the Covid-19 standard operating procedure (SOP) was revealed by Seputeh MP Teresa Kok in Parliament last Tuesday, it caused a national furore of anger and outrage. This was largely because of Khairuddin’s alleged prevarication and misinformation, including the claim that Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had approved his Turkey trip.
The Kuala Nerus MP had also said that there was a “special test” for ministers and VVIPs so that they could leave and return to the country; and that Turkey was at the time a “green (zone) country”, when in fact it was one of the epicentres of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
As a result, the online petition calling for Khairuddin's (above) resignation from the cabinet was initiated. It had about 24,000 signatures until new development surfaced on Saturday evening, when the Health Ministry admitted that Khairuddin had indeed violated the quarantine SOP on July 7. The Health Ministry said it had imposed a RM1,000 fine on the minister on Aug 7, which he had paid.
Public anger and outrage knew no bounds and the online petition for Khairuddin’s resignation has more than doubled since then.
Khairuddin completely misread the public mood and sentiment when he expressed his apology and the “donation” of his ministerial salary from May to August to the Covid-19 fund - as if money is the answer to what is morally right and wrong, together with the growing abomination of double standards in public life.
Muhyiddin’s statement one week after the Khairuddin charade and the government’s other anodyne responses are just not adequate enough to satisfy the larger Malaysian population.
What has the prime minister and the government to hide over the public disclosure of the Health Ministry’s internal investigation on Khairuddin’s SOP violation?
I call on Muhyiddin to instantly make public the Health Ministry's report and let the axe fall where it may.
LIM KIT SIANG is DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri. - Mkini
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