What would the rakyat do if he is released prematurely?
A substantial number of Malaysians spent a better part of 10 years to raise awareness and champion the successful prosecution of former prime minister Najib Razak. They won after great sacrifices.
He has been incarcerated for seven months now.
An effort is underway to give him a pardon.
Yet, the hullabaloo over Najib sheds light on our fragile present.
Pardon the paradoxical permutations
A straight answer is elusive. It is a triangle of the executive, the Pardons Board and the Agong.
Our Constitution’s Article 42 is solely about pardons and covers extensively the roles and processes with persistent caveats that those decisions are subject to advisories and considerations by committee.
So, the persistent suggestion the decision rests squarely on the monarch rather than on political interests is both naïve and misleads.
Constitutions by their very nature allow for healthy ambiguities in which the best minds of each passing generation sit and argue.
Obviously, those debates fascinate. But to oversimplify them to absolutes and rely on the complexities to reduce the ownership of the decision from any one reeks of political cover.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth.
Without political push, pardons for politicians are not accelerated or even processed.
Anwar Ibrahim was arrested in 1998 and never saw a day out of prison until September 2004. The political realities then did not permit the possibility of a pardon.
Anwar was convicted again in 2014 and served his sentence until 2018. The political realities of 2014 to 2018 did not permit the possibility of a pardon.
In May, 2018, a coalition with his party PKR’s 50 seats formed government. Anwar had still a month to complete his sentence.
The political realities of 2018 post-government change processed his pardon inside a week. The political realities then permitted a pardon.
Najib was convicted in August 2022. The Perikatan Nasional government then under Ismail Sabri Yaakob continued to govern until November 2022. With Bersatu part of his government, the political realities did not permit the possibility of a pardon.
Anwar replaced Ismail Sabri as prime minister late last year with Umno’s assistance. The political realities now permit the possibility of a pardon.
The Najib pardon scenario relies heavily on political support. Anyone saying otherwise is pulling the wool over the nation’s collective eyes.
It’s obvious many in the corridor of power desire this, otherwise it won’t merit the discussion.
All quiet on the Pakatan front
Through 2015 to 2018, Pakatan Harapan politicians could not shut up about 1MDB.
There were camel jokes, whale jokes, fat Penang boy who does not want to return to the island cause he is busy partying with the rich and famous jokes and of course, Arab passion to donate jokes.
They filled up whole rally speeches. It is the rakyat’s money and 1MDB is about the rakyat they shouted, and the speakers intended to be elected so they can go after those behind the mother of all scandals.
And here they are, the various Pakatan MPs — Gobind Singh, Nga Kor Ming and Rafizi Ramli for instance — gone silent on the Najib pardon efforts. Should they not speak up and insist that he should serve his sentence to underline the gravity of the issue?
The self-imposed gag among Pakatan MPs and politicians is palpable and reflects the ugly side of the wholehearted all-in attitude to work at all levels with Umno and to realise the unity government’s secretariat.
It means they let go of previous struggles for current gains.
The only Pakatan MP, ironically from Anwar’s PKR, Batu Pahat’s Hassan Abdul Karim has urged a rethink on the Najib pardon effort.
How did he end up the unitary voice of Opposition in a coalition built to oppose injustice?
A whale of a scandal
It went on for years. It dragged in Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Di Caprio and the Golden Globes.
It went on yachts, parties with the glamorous like Paris Hilton and the who’s who of Hollywood.
It went to the US Courts via the US Justice Department initiating investigations.
It went into investigations in at least six countries, including the United States, Singapore, Australia and Switzerland.
It went into the billions and left the Malaysian taxpayers with a bill to settle over the decades to come.
It was 1MDB. The SRC corruption is part of the whole tangled web of 1MDB’s deceit, lies and theft.
To then reduce this conviction to a small error of judgement, one minor indiscretion insults the collective intelligence of all Malaysians. The whole fiasco was diligently executed with layers of malice and absolute contempt for those who suffer.
Hassan Minhaj’s hit show Patriot Act on Netflix has a whole episode on it for a global audience, that’s how big it was.
In case it has passed notice, Najib was 1MDB’s chairman. As a reminder, just watch the clip again.
The prosecution was a mountain to scale as it is with modern financial cases when it is difficult to link acts with people when paper trails are longer than giant rivers.
Somehow, they managed to get the prized conviction.
He has been in prison for less than a year and they want to consider a pardon.
Why bother fighting for justice when the mischievous are forgiven in record time?
Clemency is for the contrite
A teacher told me years ago, if you want to be forgiven you must ask for it. You must exhibit remorse and apologise, she said.
However, she reminded me it is human to forgive, even the vilest of acts.
Can anyone please point out the moment Najib apologised to the Malaysian people?
Malaysians have seen him ride bikes, lift weights and eat his chocolates but nowhere in his vast and colourful collection of videos has the sixth prime minister submitted himself to the rakyat and said he is sorry.
While the pardons process is complex and legal, please do indulge the plain-speaking Malaysians who may lack the comprehension of complexities or fail to be erudite about the law. But they ask, are apologies from the mighty beyond the rakyat to expect?
Timing and Zahid
While a Najib apology is unlikely, a Najib release is equally unlikely before the six state elections are completed in midyear.
Neither Pakatan nor Umno want Najib to be a campaign distraction.
The talk about Najib’s release also test the waters. On how much the Malaysian public is willing to forgive in order to let the present unity government operate without the fear of PAS-dominated Perikatan Nasional (PN) to usurp the current progressive set-up.
Which leads to a discussion about Deputy Prime Minister and Umno President Zahid Hamidi. His corruption cases are coming to a close and manoeuvres may be necessary to rationalise his situation.
If Zahid is vital to the survival of the unity government, can public sentiments be placated? To know that, they have to see how Najib’s situation plays out in the court of public perception.
There’s a secondary game in play to read the mood of the people.
Freer than free
Prison is not fun. The pain of the Najib family is real. First-class flyers are not exempt from feeling longing and abandonment.
It is not unusual for national leaders to be pardoned for crimes when in office. From Nixon to pick any Korean president in the past 20 years.
But none of them participated in a scandal with the depth, scale and recklessness as 1MDB.
There should be no easy path to reconciliation over this conviction.
No man or family is above the country, its people. To reconcile, to initiate the process, the man has to come to terms with his acts.
The prime minister has to understand that to act ahead of public sentiment on this may end up giving his administration a black eye. – WRITER – Praba Ganesan – MALAY MAIL
Anwar was pardoned, so why not Najib?
Umno’s decision to petition the King to grant Najib Razak a pardon is exasperating.
It has been a week of relief and disbelief on the legal front in Malaysia.
Relief after Sam Ke Ting was freed by the Court of Appeal in the modified bicycle or “basikal lajak” case, after six long and arduous years.
Our legal system is puzzling.
For a country that wants to be a progressive democracy, we do not have a sentencing council or any official sentencing guidelines. In Malaysia most penal code offences, just state the minimum and maximum punishment, or simply the maximum.
Sentencing, upon conviction is still very much at the discretion of the magistrate or judge. The seriousness of an offense is a consideration. But other principles also apply, such as proportionality, being a first- time offender, etc.
Ultimately though, it is noticeable that one magistrate’s or judge’s sentence can vary from another.
When I inquired about the rather arbitrary nature of sentencing by our courts, one lawyer friend joked that it was ultimately dependent on the “mood” of the court. So, lawyers always work to “keep the court happy”.
That is probably why we see so many cases where different offenders in similarly serious cases receive radically differing sentences.
In the UK, which is the source legal system for Malaysia, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales was set up in April 2010. It promotes greater transparency and consistency in sentencing, while maintaining the independence of the judiciary.
The primary role of this Council is to issue guidelines on sentencing, which the courts must follow, unless it is in the interests of justice not to do so.
Perhaps, our minister in charge of law and institutional reform should consider doing likewise.
My disbelief on the legal front comes with the Umno Supreme Council decision to appeal to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to consider pardoning Najib Razak. This is over his full and final conviction for misappropriating a staggering RM42 million.
Umno’s current president, a deputy prime minister with a stunning number of pending corruption cases himself, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, ironically says his party will follow all existing legal procedures before making an appeal to the Pardons Board for consideration of the matter.
The PH Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Karim recently warned that a pardon for Najib would be a “disaster” for Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government and detrimental to the PKR president.
This was rebutted by Puad Zarkashi, an Umno Supreme Council member. Puad struck back telling Hassan not to practice double standards. He questioned whether Anwar’s royal pardon was detrimental to the then PH government.
Incidentally, many non-Umno ministers in the current unity government have distanced themselves from the decision by their government-partner to ask for a royal pardon for Najib. They just keep repeating that they will leave it to the wisdom of our King.
A petition opposing a pardon for Najib has garnered over 150,000 signatures and others supporting a pardon has between 19,000 and 35,000 signatures.
Some political analysts say the unity government has more to gain, and can ride on Najib’s popularity, especially on the “Malay-front.” Others say its image would be hurt if Najib is given a full pardon.
What is certain is that equating Najib’s potential pardon with Anwar’s pardon is ludicrous.
Anwar was accused of sodomising a male political aide in 2008 but was acquitted by the High Court in 2012. Subsequently, the appeals court overturned the acquittal and in 2015, the federal court upheld the conviction.
I still remember that the nation was in shock by the frivolity of the case.
Anwar reportedly, when addressing the panel of five Federal Court judges after his conviction was upheld, said: “You have become partners in crime in the murder of judicial independence.”
He went on to say “I maintain my innocence. This to me is a fabrication coming from a political conspiracy to stop my political career.”
Eventually, the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong pardoned him in 2018. Anwar himself said that the King found his conviction a travesty of justice. I reckon that most Malaysians agree with this.
Yes, sodomy is illegal in our Muslim-majority Malaysia. But for argument’s sake, it is an offence which is essentially a private construct? No one polices his neighbour’s premises to see if someone there is getting sodomised or not.
The nation does not get hurt by this.
However, Najib has been found guilty of looting money to the tune of RM42 million, which was transferred from SRC International – a former unit of 1MDB – into his private accounts. Additionally, there are a slew of other pending cases against him.
The nation has been seriously hurt by his actions.
Funds that should have been used to benefit our country and provide for good governance with better schools, healthcare, and welfare, were looted. Najib’s actions, together with the actions of other corrupt politicians, have ripped a gaping hole in the very fabric of our society.
Surely, even the sycophants can see the difference in pardoning Anwar and asking the same for Najib? WRITER – Shankar R. Santhiram – FMT
MALAY MAIL / FREE MALAYSIA TODAY
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