FORMER attorney-general Tommy Thomas expressed his disbelief at the popularity and support former prime minister Najib Razak has been receiving recently. 

Despite the criminal charges levelled against the Pekan MP, Thomas said he was flabbergasted that people still adore Najib and want him to return as the country’s prime minister. 

“That (the popularity Najib has got recently) is something that I find difficult to understand. 

“Is this (Najib) the kind of hero you want?” Thomas asked today during the launch of the Chinese version of his book, My Story: Justice in the Wildernesses. 

With existing and also emerging new evidence from court trials in Malaysia and also in the United States linked to 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and subsidiary companies, Thomas said Najib should be an unpopular figure. 

He added that Najib’s 1MDB mega-scandal was also the reason why Barisan Nasional (BN) faltered in the last general election after being in power for more than 60 years.  

“There is no doubt. Anybody who writes on the recent fall, the first defeat of BN since independence, would attribute it to Najib’s unpopularity because of 1MDB.

“That was a factor. And yet, after BN was defeated, he was in the opposition and then the evidence of wrongdoings became massive both at the SRC International trial, the 1MDB-Tanore trial and the Roger Ng trial in the US. 

“The amount of evidence that has been uncovered since GE14 is incredibly damning because the money trail is there. 

“So, the logical answer would have been, against the face of incredibly new evidence, built up on accumulated evidence, he should be far more unpopular.

“And yet there are millions of Malaysians who adore or seem to adore him four years later. That is something I can’t understand. You must ask a psychologist, psychiatrist, sociologist. I’m perplexed,” he said. 

With Najib’s increasing popularity even after the scandals, Thomas asked if Malaysians are not able to differentiate good values from bad ones these days. 

“To me it is the reflection of the values of the people of Malaysia. You mean you can’t recognise values?” he asked. 

In July 2020, Najib was found guilty by the Kuala Lumpur High Court of seven charges of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering in relation to RM42 million belonging to SRC International Sdn Bhd.

He was sentenced by the High Court to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million.

Last year, the Court of Appeal upheld Najib’s conviction on graft charges relating to SRC International. 

Najib will have his final appeal heard for the SRC International trial in August. 

Meanwhile, Najib is also facing 25 charges of abuse of power and money laundering over alleged 1MDB funds amounting to RM2.28 billion being deposited into his AmBank accounts between February 2011 and December 2014.

The Pekan MP faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Apart from this, when asked why Najib and Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s trials are taking such a long time to conclude, Thomas said that the country’s judicial system needs a revamp. 

“His (Najib) case is going on long because we all know as lawyers, adjournments are easy to obtain in Malaysia. Judges are not strict enough and cases are not allotted to start and finish in one go.

“So we have structural and systemic problems of trials which are really exploited,” he said. – July 3, 2022.