PETALING JAYA, Aug 28 — Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has no standing to criticise the government’s efforts to address the plight of some stateless Indians, said Klang MP Charles Santiago.
Lumping MIC vice-president Datuk T. Mohan in the same category, he insisted that their criticism now was “shameless” as both had not helped to resolve the problem when Barisan Nasional had still been in power.
“It’s called dumb and dumber. Just because 3,853 cases of stateless Indians were recorded, it doesn’t mean that’s the final figure,” he said, adding that his office received hundreds of cases over a period of weeks this year.
Earlier this month, in a bid to resolve the stateless Indians issue, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that stateless citizens over the age of 60 and currently holding a red identification card, would be given a blue MyKad if they fulfilled the required conditions.
Yesterday, Deputy Home Minister Mohd Azis Jamman told the Senate that there were 3,853 applications for citizenship from stateless Indians up to May 30 this year.
He also described previous claims that as many as 300,000 such cases exist to be inaccurate.
Santiago joined other critics of Azis’ response in asserting that the applicants were not the entirety of those affected by the issue.
Najib asked yesterday if Pakatan Harapan will now apologise for maligning him over the issue, after citing the deputy minister’s reply to insist that the matter was exaggerated.
