CORONAVIRUS | Former premier Najib Abdul Razak has kept the heat on former Pakatan Harapan ministers over the Sri Petaling tabligh gathering which subsequently emerged as the largest Covid-19 infection cluster in Malaysia.
Having targeted former health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad, Najib today questioned former Federal Territories minister Khalid Samad on the application by the Sri Petaling mosque committee to close a road in their area from February 25 to March 2.
"That day, Dzulkefly asked the former home minister (Muhyiddin Yassin) why the ministry on February 13 approved the tabligh gathering with 16,500 participants.
"Today, Najib is asking the former Federal Territories minister, why did Kuala Lumpur City Hall issue a letter on February 17 stating they have no objections against the gathering?" claimed Najib on Twitter.
"Who was the minister in charge of DBKL on Feb 17?"
According to the DBKL letter, their approval over the road closure was granted based on prior approval obtained by the applicant from the district police and KL traffic police for traffic control assistance in the affected area.
When contacted, Khalid confirmed that DBKL's approval was subjected to conditions including prior approval from police and it was only to close the road as requested by organisers.
However, Khalid said overall approvals for the tabligh gathering to proceed was "not seen as a problem" at that time.
"... We didn't know the government will be toppled.
"The Harapan government had handled the outbreak well during the first wave and if we continued to remain in government, we were confident that we could have handled the second wave as well," the Shah Alam MP told Malaysiakini.
"If we had known there would be a change in government and the new government taking over is less capable, for sure we would not have approved it (the tabligh gathering)," said Khalid.
Khalid also echoed Dzulkefly's remarks that Harapan's Covid-19 management was hijacked by politickings that led up to the formation of Perikatan Nasional.
The tit-for-tat surrounding the tabligh gathering started with Health Minister Dr Adham Baba's accusation that the previous government had failed to prevent the tabligh cluster.
Dzulkefly, in response, said that Muhyiddin, as the former home minister, was the best person to have been aware of the tabligh gathering but could have been too focused on "another agenda" at the time to realise the matter, referring to the eventual "Sheraton Move" involving Muhyiddin and Bersatu's defection from Harapan.
He told Malaysiakini that now was not the time to point fingers, although Adham should instead question Muhyiddin if the latter insisted on finding faults over the Sri Petaling cluster of infections.
In response, Najib yesterday claimed that Dzulkefly previously answered his own question to Muhyiddin, through a February 12 statement on there being no immediate need to postpone activities involving the public, despite a World Health Organization reminder against mass gatherings to curb the outbreak of Covid-19.
The Sri Petaling tabligh gathering was eventually linked to over 40 percent of the total positive Covid-19 cases in the country so far.
On March 15, several days after the Sri Petaling mosque was closed for disinfection, Bukit Aman Internal Security and Public Order department director Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani reportedly clarified that the tabligh gathering did not require police approval as it was a religious gathering. - Mkini
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