PH gets its own ‘get out of jail’ card from Najib pardon

Hassan Karim’s opinion that the conditional pardon for Najib Razak is a “golden opportunity” for Pakatan Harapan, deserves attention – and, more pointedly, exploitation.

Since last November, PH and its component parties have been reeling from electoral setbacks in Sabah, Johor and Negeri Sembilan. Rubbing salt into the wound was the glee displayed by its erstwhile partner Umno over the PH defeats.

It was particularly galling in Negeri Sembilan, where the PKR-led state government was toppled and DAP’s Loke Siew Fook defeated at the hands of an MCA opponent who was cheered on by none other than Umno chief Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

The fact that Zahid sits next to Loke in the Cabinet did not give the Umno president pause in his quest of electoral spoils. Apparently, all is fair and foul in Cabinet and on the hustings.

If Zahid lacks esprit de corps, PH need not bother about decorum in seeking to exploit Najib’s conditional pardon for electoral advantage.

Equality under the law

However one looks at the pardon and the house arrest arrangement for Najib, it sits ill with ordinary people, who are apt to think that there is one rule for the super-elite and another for the hoi polloi.

This is despite the fact that many people think Najib was a good prime minister, especially during the first 18 months after he took over from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2009.

Nothing grates more on ordinary people’s sense of being underprivileged than seeing the guarantee of equal treatment before the law honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

Also, Umno’s decision to organise a fundraiser for Najib to pay his RM50 million fine in order to fulfil a condition of his house arrest must rank as a faux pas of disastrous proportions.

It is like asking victims to help pay the fine imposed on a felon caught with his hands in the public till.

Public morality

Because the issue of Najib Razak and his responsibility for the financial scandals arising from the 1MDB imbroglio involves questions of public morality and accountability, it is heartening to hear what Amanah deputy president Mujahid Yusof Rawa has said.

Amanah has not particularly distinguished itself in handling these issues because of the space it has conceded to PAS and its president, Abdul Hadi Awang, who have ruled the rhetorical roost.

At any one time, it is difficult to sort out what the PAS supremo is actually saying because his writings and speeches are clouded in jargon. Listeners give up, if for no other reason than that the subject matter has to do with Islam, a subject about which a non-Muslim, especially, must tread with caution.

So, when Mujahid, in criticising Umno and PAS for celebrating the grant of a conditional pardon to Najib, spoke of the tawdriness of the moral compass of both parties, he employed a clarity that was the reverse of Hadi’s opacity.

“What has happened to the moral compass of our Malay people?” Mujahid said.

“It’s time the Malays made an important decision for the sake of their dignity. Don’t allow Malay dignity to be represented by those who normalise crime, otherwise our future generations will consider corruption as heroics for the Malay people,” the Amanah leader said plaintively.

PH has been on the back foot for some years now, a consequence of Anwar Ibrahim’s strange loss of effectiveness and clarity of vision.

The “golden opportunity” presented by Najib’s conditional pardon and Umno’s fundraising are a shot in the foot by Umno and PAS that PH must exploit to the hilt.

A gift horse is not to be looked at in the mouth.

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.

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