🇲🇾 Najib is sooo 'sorry' about that whole 1MDB thing

Hello friends!

A very quick note from me today as I run off to the ANU’s Philippines Update. I’m very excited to hear from all the speakers (and a hell of a week for it, too) but I will be keeping a close eye on Malaysia while I do so. Najib is up at court today and it might be something. Or it might not! Here’s why from me.

(Also, Mahathir Mohamad has been discharged from hospital. I should never have doubted.)

Erin Cook

Later today, the High Court will decide if the former PM must enter his defence on four charges relating to 1MDB — or if he’ll be acquitted. These charges relate to corruption and money laundering with the initial charges laid all the way back in 2018. If he is not acquitted and later found guilty, that’s another 20 years in prison. Separately, you’ll remember, he was also sentenced to 12 years back in the 2022 case involving SRC International funds though this was later reduced to six years under a royal pardon. 

All of this explains the desperate apology late last week.

“It pains me every day to know that the 1MDB debacle happened under my watch as minister of finance and prime minister. For that, I would like to apologise unreservedly to the Malaysian people,” he said in a letter read at a press conference last Thursday by his son, Mohamad Nizar Mohd Najib. Oh, I didn’t realise he was sorry! In that case…

The response here has been varied. I’m personally very alarmed by this. A lot of countries we talk about here, including Malaysia, have a streak of ‘better to forgive and forget than confront and prosecute.’ This works beautifully for neighbourhood disputes and family drama, but less so for one of the largest corruption cases in history. 

I’m with DAP secretary-general Loke Siew Fook. “It’s not a question of accepting any apology. With or without the apology, a crime is a crime. He has been convicted, and the conviction, of course, has been upheld by the (apex) court. He was found guilty. That remains a fact. So to me, the apology does not mean anything,” he told media on Monday, as per FMT.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is having a nightmare. He ‘accepted’ the apology and has been battling blowback ever since. But, he’s the leader, what do you want him to do! He asks. “I am the Prime Minister, I am the 'bapa negara' (father of the nation). When someone offers their apology, what do you want me to do? So I said that the apology is well received but then we have certain people saying they cannot accept it. What sort of behaviour is this?” he said on Sunday, as reported by the Star. 

Hmm, fair cop I guess. It’s an unprecedented case and how to navigate it! Oh, hold on, he has more to say. Critics are ‘slow-witted’: “This is all nonsense — (these are) people who don’t know where they stand and looking for reasons to be angry.” After all, loads of people were involved! Why are they singling out this one man, the prime minister for a decade? This is starting to stink so badly from the Prime Minister’s Office that I think they might need to check for skeletons. 

Najib has never really been abandoned. He’s not an MP and he’s supposed to be in the slammer, but he still has thousands calling him ‘Bossku’ (my boss). Umno Youth chief Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh is leading the charge. He’s launched an online show of solidarity as well as plans for supporters to gather at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex this morning, Malaysiakini reports today. 

This drives me absolutely wild. He’s sorry a week before a case came up and now everyone must accept that or else be called ‘slow-witted’ by the prime minister? This is so transparently set up. Either he’s acquitted by the court today (I’m not so sure on that, but wouldn’t be surprised) or is later pardoned to a much lower sentence by the monarch on the argument that he is ‘sorry.’ Be sorry! I don’t care. Be sorry in a jail cell. That’s $4 billion stolen from the schoolrooms, hospitals and mouths of Malaysians and there’s no apology for that.