In a candid interview by the Asia Times, Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan may have triggered another round of power struggle in Umno by baring his thoughts on former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak’s role in the infamous 1MDB scandal.
In the frank chat with interviewer Nicholas Cochan, Muhamad, popularly known as Tok Mat, blamed Najib for having singlehandedly caused the fall of Umno in the last general election due to his failure to come clean on the 1MDB scandal and to step aside temporarily.
And he also stated that the root of the nation’s current malaise stems from his party Umno’s failure to tell the truth about the scandal.
As for Najib’s constant claim of innocence, Tok Mat said that Najib couldn’t prove that in court. He said: “Whether Najib is wrong or right, people are very clear about what he’s done. People know. I know. We know what’s happened from what we read.”
Najib was sentenced to 12 years jail and RM210 million fine in the High Court in July 2020 on the misappropriation of RM42 million from SRC International (a former subsidiary of 1MDB), and the same sentence was upheld in the Court of Appeal in December 2021.
Najib’s final appeal will be heard in the Federal Court in coming August.
Apart from this trial, Najib is also going through another two 1MDB-related trials in the High Court, including one on corruption charges involving RM2.3 billion of 1MDB funds.
However, with regards to the SRC case, Tok Mat expressed reservation over the fairness of the High Court trial, stemming from the Defense’s allegation of conflict of interests on the part of the presiding judge Nazlan Ghazali.
Despite the above reservation, Tok Mat strongly ruled out a pre-emptive pardon for Najib should the latter’s appeal be rejected by the Federal Court, saying that he must first serve his sentence before a pardon is contemplated just like predecessors Harun Idris, former mentri besar of Selangor, and Mokhtar Hashim, former minister who were jailed for four years and eight years respectively before being pardoned.
The above interview was narrated in an article titled “Exclusive: Umno’s No 2 thinks Najib should go to jail” published in Asia Times on July 5.
In an immediate response, Tok Mat denied that he said Najib should go to jail. He said the Asia Times report has taken his remarks out of context.
What he said was that Najib must get a fair trial. If Najib is eventually found guilty, then he must face the consequences. “But the SRC trial is not over yet, and I don’t believe he had a fair trial, so how could I suggest that Najib should go to jail?”.
But Kochan immediately twitted to retort Tok Mat, denying that Tok Mat’s remarks were taken out of context and he stood by what was written in the article.
To substantiate his claim, he attached the link of the audio recordings of the interview.
Anyone who has listened through the audio recording should have no difficulty to conclude that Mat Hasan has not only uttered what he is reported to have said, but he also meant exactly what he said.
Thus, by admitting such wrongdoings, the deputy president of Umno has broken a taboo long held sacrosanct by the entire hierarchy of Umno.
The Umno government is indeed guilty of what is already universally acknowledged as the grandest heist of public funds in history, and its then Umno president and prime minister Najib was the chief culprit of this infamy.
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If properly disseminated, Mat Hasan’s such admission should send shock waves across the Umno hierarchy that may intensify the current conflicts among warring factions struggling to extricate from their current predicament, the outcome of which will in turn alter interparty relationships among the ruling group of parties.
Reverberations of these shock waves should also awaken the complacent party grassroots and loyal electorate to the flip side of Umno’s continued kleptocratic rule.
Looking forward to the coming general election, it is hoped that the masses could see the perils of the continuation of an unrepentant kleptocracy and use their votes to reinstate a clean and competent government to turn a new leaf for this crisis-ridden country. - Mkini
KIM QUEK is the author of the banned book “The March to Putrajaya”, and best seller “Where to, Malaysia?”.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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