Suddenly, it is no longer about the convicted felon, Najib Abdul Razak, and his crimes, because the focus is now on one Federal judge’s dissenting ruling. Hence, the application for a royal pardon.
Umno used the dissenting judgment by the Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak, Abdul Rahman Sebli, as a segue to obtain a royal pardon. A supporting bit-part was provided by the MACC playing the roles of judge, jury, and executioner when investigating judge Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.
Have the Umno Malays no dignity? We learned yesterday, that the Umno supreme council would like the Agong to grant Najib (above, right) a full pardon. Whatever for?
Slippery slope
If Najib were granted a royal pardon, it must surely count as one of the darkest days in the history of Malaysia.
If the world’s worst kleptocrat were granted a royal pardon, how do you think the rakyat would react?
A royal pardon for Najib will be an insult to law-abiding Malaysians. It will open the floodgates to anger and anarchy. If people in authority can get away with stealing billions of ringgit of taxpayers’ money, then what does it say about the country?
How will it reflect on its governance, its laws, and the judiciary? Granting the royal pardon will make a mockery of our judiciary which tried its best to project a clean image of fairness and sound judgement ever since the Constitutional Crisis of 1988, when Dr Mahathir Mohamad destroyed the independence of the judiciary.
If a royal pardon were to be granted, the rakyat will start to question the efficacy and role of the institution involved in granting Najib this pardon. The dynamics of the nation may take a different trajectory.
The royal pardon should not be about the freedom of one criminal because, more importantly, the honour and reputation of a nation are at stake.
Delay tactics
Why should Najib be freed after barely spending eight months in jail? He was sentenced in July 2020 and only went to prison after his final appeal fell through in August 2022. He is supposed to spend the next 12 years behind bars and pay an RM210 million fine, a sentence which many have described as extremely lenient, considering the damage he has done to Malaysia.
We were subjected to a lengthy wait before Najib’s trial could commence because it was alleged that it was time-consuming to collate all the evidence and there was a shortage of men with the necessary expertise to compile the relevant information. The evidence had to be watertight so that Najib’s legal team could not find any technical glitches.
Even the trial appeared to drag on as all sorts of tactics, including the intervention of the lawyer’s dog and the wedding of his son, were employed by Najib and his lawyer to allow the trial to linger.
Najib has not paid his fine, and he has also struck a deal about the income tax which he owes the Inland Revenue Board. How many people are accorded such luxuries and leeway?
We waited patiently for five years for justice to happen but before that, we were lied to by Najib and his then cabinet. Many of his critics were also silenced.
The former cabinet members swore allegiance to Najib then and spun lies to try to convince us about the “Arab prince donation of RM2.6 billion”, but it is ironic that today, some of these Najib loyalists are installed in Anwar Ibrahim’s government. They lack principles and their overarching need is to remain in power.
All part of the plan?
How do members of the Umno supreme council fail to realise the seriousness of the crimes which Najib has committed?
Perhaps, this was Umno-Baru’s plan all along and the signs were there for all of us to see. The following events do not look like a casual coincidence.
Najib’s legal team had tried to cast doubt on judge Nazlan by claiming that he had a conflict of interest in the 1MDB case. It referred to the time when Nazlan was part of Maybank before he became a judicial commissioner. As a High Court judge, Nazlan had sentenced Najib to 12 years in prison and fined him RM210 million for corruption, abuse of power, and money laundering.
In February this year, Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, ruled that the MACC probe against Nazlan had not followed protocol. She noted the “curious” timing of the publicising of the probe done before Najib’s SRC appeal before the apex court last year.
On March 31, we had the lone dissenting verdict by judge Rahman in Najib’s failed judicial review bid of the SRC International case.
On April 2, Najib’s daughter Nooryana Najwa posted an excerpt of a letter, purportedly from the MACC to the Chief Justice, stating that Nazlan had violated the Judges’ Code of Ethics.
On April 6, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Azalina Othman Said appeared to have gone out of her way to update Najib’s lawyer, Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, about the MACC probe into Nazlan.
Was all of this meticulously planned?
It looks very much like Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and his Umno cohorts are in control.
Suddenly, Najib’s terrible crimes pale into insignificance by that one dissenting judgement, and the hugely anticipated but repugnant royal pardon.
So, who is in charge? Anwar? Zahid? Or are they all being manipulated by Najib from his control room at Kajang HQ? - Mkini
MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army, and the president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, Twitter.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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