KUALA LUMPUR – After submitting a memorandum to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to seek royal intervention in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s corruption conviction, a non-governmental organisation has urged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob to apply for a royal pardon to free the former prime minister.
Pertubuhan Jalinan Perpaduan Negara Malaysia president Syed Mohammad Imran Syed Abdul Aziz insisted that the pardon application must come from Ismail Sabri and the royal pardon must be granted now through the king.
“The prime minister must submit the application to the king. It must be done by the prime minister,” he told press members after submitting a memorandum to palace officials.
“If the prime minister does not act on this, we consider the government to be cruel.
“This is a Barisan Nasional government, and you frame someone who has done so much for the party since he was 23. Now he is behind bars, what are we doing?”
Together with the NGO were some 300 supporters of Najib, who gathered outside the palace to appeal to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to issue a royal pardon for the former Umno president, who is now in prison serving a 12-year sentence after the Federal Court upheld his SRC International Bhd conviction yesterday.
The majority of the supporters were decked in black clothes and arrived at the gathering by motorcycle.
Should Ismail Sabri refuse to submit the application, Imran has urged Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as well as party MPs to withdraw support for the prime minister that could result in the nation entering early polls.
“If there’s no royal pardon by the end of this week, we will come (to Istana Negara) with more people next week.”
Also part of the memorandum, Imran said, was for Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission chief commissioner Tan Sri Azam Baki as well as Attorney-General Tan Sri Idrus Harun to meet the king and present the evidence that there was a conflict of interest in regards to judge Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.
In a June filing, Najib alleged Nazlan, now a Court of Appeal judge, failed to disclose his role in his previous job as Maybank’s company secretary and group general counsel in 2012.
Najib’s lead defence counsel at the time, Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, said there was enough merit for them to seek a retrial as Nazlan could be an important witness in the 1MDB proceedings.
In addition, he also claimed that the royal pardon of Najib is what “the Agong wishes to see”.
“After submitting the memorandum to the Istana Negara’s representative, he told me that the Agong wants to see this (royal pardon of Najib).
“The king really cares about this pardoning matter. Both Najib and the king are from Pahang so the king knows him well.”
Yesterday, Najib became the first former Malaysian prime minister to serve jail time, following the apex court’s decision to uphold the high court’s previous ruling that Najib was guilty of all seven charges in his case.
The five-member bench chaired by chief justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat upheld the court decision on Najib’s conviction of all seven charges in the SRC International case and his 12-year prison sentence. – The Vibes, August 24, 2022
Additional reporting by Hakim Mahari
