Najib for PM again, really?

I nearly choked on my lunch today when I read news from MalaysiaNow today that an NGO has submitted a memorandum asking the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong to pardon Najib Razak and appoint him as interim prime minister.

Seriously? Do we want a PM who has been sentenced to 12 years in prison and a fine of RM210 million, not to mention who is still facing a litany of criminal charges? Are we so bereft of prime ministerial candidates that we have to shamelessly elevate a convict to become the most powerful man in the country?

The current administration may not be perfect. But to even entertain the notion of Najib’s return is to scrape the barrel. Even if we were to rule out Perikatan Nasional leaders as successor to the prime minister, surely we can think of other leaders who have more moral fibre than him?

Lest we get carried away by the Bossku’s rapid-fire daily social media posts, the former “Malaysian Official 1” is the man who led a nation the US labelled as kleptocratic for being party to one of the most brazen heists of public funds in recent times.

His shenanigans sparked investigations by over a dozen countries with the money trail littered with his fingerprints and that of his fugitive co-conspirator, Jho Low. This is the same man whose conviction was described as “the worst case of abuse of position” by the judge who presided over and meted out the sentence against Najib.

Do we still want to become a global laughing stock for bringing back a convicted PM? Have we not been shamed enough by the international media’s reports on how brazen the grand larceny was, carried out right under our noses during his administration?

Can we trust this man again with our public funds which have been running short due to the Covid-19 pandemic? We certainly will not fall for tall tales about how his family’s fortunes were amassed from menabung sejak kecil (savings since young). Or that Najib’s family wealth was from his father’s inheritance.

So please… we can have anyone as prime minister but him. I’d rather settle for a cat to be the PM than to see Najib’s return.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.