Are all Officials, including prime minister, deputy prime ministers, ministers, and MPs no longer immune in Malaysia, and can be now charged for crimes as any public servant?
Najib Razak’s imprisonment for 12 years did really send a clear message that Ex-Prime Ministers are no longer immune from any criminal prosecution.
Immunity usually protects officials against criminal prosecution.
DAP deputy secretary-general, Liu Cheng Tong, told Al Jazeera Net, Najib Razak’s conviction indicates that “Officials are no longer and will no longer be immune, and that they will be subject to law and order, accountability and legal scrutiny as they assume his responsibilities.”
He said the change was not limited to the government but went beyond it to end the era of politicians and senior officials’ rule without accountability.
Political analyst Abdul Razzaq al-Saqqaf also told Aljazeera that corruption trials are an opportunity for internal reform for the parties that exercised power, especially “Umno”, and to get rid of those corrupt dinosaurs dominating it, and may constitute an electoral lever for the party, by claiming the transparency of the party in that it did not interfere in the conduct of the judiciary, and that it conducts internal reviews aimed at cleaning the party of corrupt people.
However, the question now is: Will this be applied only to the Former Prime Ministers and Former Ministers who are no longer in power or to those who are still holding office too?
As we noticed, in Malaysia as in many countries, when you are in power, nobody dare to touch you. But when you are out of power everyone can bully you, an observer told Malaysia World News.
Proverb says: “when the cow falls, many knives come out”. It means when the cow is slaughtered everyone bring out a knife to cut it.
When Najib was in power- when he was Prime Minister- nobody could arrest him or even dare to question him.
Only after Barisan Nasional lost in the General Election and Najib was ousted then they brought him to court and jailed him.
Therefore we cannot claim that officials in Malaysia are no longer immune, observer said.
The law must be above all, those who are still in power and those who lost power.
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