PETALING JAYA: A Johor DAP leader who had previously cautioned Pakatan Harapan against welcoming Muda into the coalition says Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has no moral ground to criticise Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s conditional discharge.
Dr Boo Cheng Hau said the Muar MP should first see through his own criminal breach of trust charges.
Syed Saddiq has been charged with abetting the Bersatu Youth wing’s former assistant treasurer, Rafiq Hakim, in the commission of CBT of RM1 million.
The Muda president is also charged with misusing RM120,000 in donations for the 14th general election as well as two counts of money laundering amounting to RM100,000.
Boo, who is a Johor DAP committee member, said some leaders in the party, including state chairman Liew Chin Tong, had pushed for the former youth and sports minister to defend the Muar parliamentary seat.
Boo also said he was against giving Muda the Tanjung Piai parliamentary seat and the Puteri Wangsa state seat last year because of Syed Saddiq’s CBT charges.
Giving Muda seats went against the principle that those who had been charged should not be holding any public or party offices as it could be used as ransom to bargain for personal benefits, he said.
“Frankly he has no credibility to comment on Zahid’s DNAA,” he told FMT, referring to the discharge not amounting to an acquittal granted to the deputy prime minister over corruption charges.
“He should have stepped aside in the last general election and should have led by example.”
Boo was commenting on Muda’s decision to withdraw support for the current unity government following the decision on Zahid’s case.
Syed Saddiq had said that the decision to grant Zahid a conditional discharge had made it difficult for Muda to remain with the government bloc as the party did not want to allow Malaysia to normalise corruption.
But Boo felt that Syed Saddiq was barking up the wrong tree, as Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had nothing to do with the decision.
The justice system – namely the Attorney-General’s Chambers, public prosecutor and judiciary – and the government are independent of each other, he said.
“It’s ironic that Syed Saddiq wants the government to intervene when proper reform means these two branches must be independent.
“Syed Saddiq should have directed his ire at the AGC, not Anwar. And certainly not cite Zahid’s case as the reason to leave the government when the government has nothing to do with it.”
Boo said a constitutional amendment is needed to allow for top civil servants to be vetted and approved by a specific parliamentary committee before the candidate’s name is submitted to the King for approval.
He said if this had been done a long time ago, it would have prevented accusations that the prime minister had meddled in the legal process. - FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.