Ex-Bar president wants Bar Council to challenge Najib’s commuted sentence

 

Ex-Malaysian Bar president Zainur Zakaria said former prime minister Najib Razak had only served one-and-a-half years of his jail sentence and as such, his application for a pardon should not have been processed.

KUALA LUMPUR: A former Malaysian Bar president wants the incoming Bar Council members to file a legal challenge against the Pardons Board over its decision to halve Najib Razak’s jail sentence for his SRC International corruption conviction.

Zainur Zakaria, who was president from 1993 to 1995, claimed that the Federal Territories Pardons Board “acted ultra vires under Article 42 of the Federal Constitution” in slashing the former prime minister’s 12-year jail sentence to six years as well as reducing the RM210 million fine to RM50 million.

“He has only served one-and-a-half years of his jail sentence, and hence his application for a pardon ought not to have been processed and determined in the first place,” he said in his motion submitted for the Bar’s annual general meeting on Saturday.

The Federal Court had in 2022 affirmed Najib’s conviction for abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering for RM42 million of SRC International funds. A review against the SRC International case was also rejected on a majority decision.

Zainur further claimed that Najib had “never shown any remorse or contrition as to his involvement in the 1MDB affairs” and continued to claim that the court had not treated him fairly.

Meanwhile, lawyer Abhilaash Subramaniam is calling for the incoming Bar Council members to demand that the government not to proceed with certain proposed constitutional amendments on citizenship.

He said that “regressive amendments” might continue to create stateless people in Malaysia.

“The suggested amendment seeks to place foundlings under the discretionary authority of the home minister for citizenship determination, unjustly imposing the onus of proving parentage on the child,” Abhilaash added.

Last week, former deputy law and institutional reform minister Ramkarpal Singh said the proposed amendment would deny foundlings automatic citizenship if passed, and force them into a lengthy and uncertain bureaucratic registration process.

Apart from Ramkarpal, Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Karim of PKR, also criticised the proposed amendments and vowed to oppose it. Both Hassan and Ramkarpal are lawyers.

Home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, however, said the door to citizenship for foundlings “would not be closed”, as long as their births were promptly registered upon discovery. - FMT