Jet-setter Khairuddin hits the tarmac in pursuit of Jasin seat

GE14 | Businessperson Khairuddin Abu Hassan is best known for lodging reports on the 1MDB scandal around the world.

However, the jet-setter is now hitting the tarmac to canvass rural voters in his general election debut as a parliamentary candidate for Amanah.

Jasin is a Malay-majority rural parliamentary seat in Malacca, which has always been a BN stronghold. BN won Jasin with a majority of 11,763 votes in the last election.

Aside from several population centres, most of Jasin is covered in rubber and palm oil plantations, with a smattering of villages and isolated houses.

Although the Penang-born corporate man might seem like an ill-fitting choice for this rustic constituency, Khairuddin has his own strategy for taking on local voters, as he explained to Malaysiakini.

Bringing his experience as a former Umno leader to his campaigning, he said he is doing house-to-house visits, especially in the isolated areas in Jasin.

“In remote areas, I walk kilometres every morning to evening, and then at night, we do ceramah (photo),” he said to Malaysiakini in an interview yesterday.

During Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s premiership, BN was so strong because its house-to-house machinery was very effective, he said.

“And I am adopting that strategy here because we have sufficient manpower,” he said.

During his ceramah sessions, which are focused on small villages in Jasin, Khairuddin’s main topic tends to be 1MDB.

“I just want to talk within the frame of my expertise. If you see, I never talk bad about the Jasin incumbent Ahmad Hamzah,” he said.

Khairuddin, who is married to popular actress Umie Aida, also dismissed the notion that the rural folk do not understand the multi-billion ringgit scandal.

“I tell you, the rural residents of Jasin are so well-versed. Talking about 1MDB depends on how you explain it.

“When I tell them that their money as a taxpayer is being embezzled from 1MDB and that because of this 1MDB scandal, they have to pay GST, they can understand it very well,” he said.

Khairuddin came under the spotlight for lodging multiple reports against 1MDB in the country and overseas, and then getting detained under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) on Sept 18, 2015.

He was one of the first few individuals in the country who highlighted the issues surrounding 1MDB, even travelling to UK, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong and France to lodge reports against the alleged money laundering.

The 55-year-old paid a heavy price for his campaign against 1MDB.

He was arrested two days before a planned trip to New York, US, to meet the FBI and detained for almost two months under Sosma for alleged sabotage of financial institutions.

‘I will never leave Mahathir’

While all this was happening, Khairuddin was expelled from his position as Batu Kawan Umno division vice-chairperson for his efforts against 1MDB. 

He then joined Bersatu, the Umno splinter party founded by Mahathir, but left it shortly after and subsequently fell off the radar.

So it came as a surprise when Khairuddin, also known as Abang K, was suddenly announced in mid-April as Amanah’s candidate for the Jasin parliamentary seat.

He dismissed rumours that he had quit Bersatu and ended up in Amanah because he had a falling out with Bersatu leadership.

“I am a staunch loyalist of Mahathir’s and I will never leave Mahathir. Anywhere I am, Mahathir is everything to me.

“I also have high respect for Muhyiddin, who has sacrificed so much for the nation, so how can I have a conflict with Muhyiddin?” Khairuddin said.

He insisted that he left Bersatu in 2016 because he did not want to taint the new party with his own personal court cases, especially the Sosma charge.

His decision to join Amanah now, he said, is because as an ex-Umno grassroots leader, he wanted to help pull Umno votes for Amanah.

“We are under one umbrella under Pakatan Harapan, so I said, why don’t we form some strategy to separate (the ex-Umno leaders in opposition parties).

“I wanted to make sure that Amanah has at least one ex-Umno leader so that we can play a role in every party to pull support from Umno,” he said.

Though he said Mahathir did not appreciate his justification for leaving Bersatu in 2016, they have appeared to patch things up as the Harapan chairperson made time last Friday to share the same stage with Khairuddin and speak at a ceramah in Pekan Merlimau, Jasin.

This was the only other event Mahathir spoke at in Malacca last Friday, aside from the ceramah perdana that night, which drew a crowd of almost 10,000.

Khairuddin also thanked former Umno minister Daim Zainuddin for coming to Jasin to meet with his campaign team, though Daim did not speak at any ceramah in Malacca. - Mkini