TIME is running out fast for former prime minister Najib Razak.
It was inevitable that Najib would be charged in court for his involvement in the 1MDB scandal, and when graft-busters came knocking on his door on Tuesday to arrest him, it was not a surprise.
But the slick arrest was a dramatic surprise to the country in general, especially its journalists who had staked out his house weeks before but left when nothing much happened.
Foreign media outlets must have been scrambling to fly their journalists in for one of THE stories of the year — after all, word was Najib would not be nabbed yet, what more charged.
But nobody was more certain about the arrest than Najib himself. After all, his team had time to prepare a 2:20-minute video of him declaring his innocence; this was released to the public on his social media accounts less than half a day after the arrest, and while Najib was still in custody.
“If you hear this message, action has been taken against me,” Najib says at the start of the video.
Najib’s tactic was clear: the “political persecution” card is now in play.
But so is the religious card, looking at the images and the tone used in the montage, while a sappy tune played in the background.
After starting with a full salam greeting, the first few images showed Najib in baju Melayu praying during his first nights under close scrutiny, and sitting beside his mother garbed in the telekung used by Muslim women here during prayers.
Interspersed with images of voters and the MRT, Najib was later shown sitting down with his hands raised in supplication as he begged for forgiveness for his many weaknesses.
As he described himself as “imperfect” and just “like any other human”, he was again pictured wearing a baju Melayu, greeted by smiling old men in similar attire — as if to show that he is a man of the people, rather than someone who was born with a silver spoon.
More photos of Najib praying were shown as he lamented his “worldly trials”, and compared it to judgment in the afterlife.
It also invoked the name of Allah the most merciful and most compassionate, who knows all, before ending with yet another full salam.
This is not the first time Najib turned to religion ever since his fall from grace.
After his Langgak Duta mansion was raided, a group of tahfiz students from the Tahfiz Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah school where 23 students were killed in a fire last year, broke fast at his place, in a show of sympathy.
The students were spotted regularly at his place throughout the fasting month, most of the times praying and reciting Quranic verses there.
Now that Najib has been charged, his supporters have somehow discovered human and civil rights, even as human rights defenders were vilified during his administration.
After all, who can forget when Najib demonised “human rightism” in 2014, calling it a threat to Islam and its adherents?
And yet, those purporting to be his supporters outside the court the day he was charged using the hashtag #FreeNajib called on Putrajaya to “respect civil rights”, as they “condemn human rights violations” and “demand rule of law.”
In the past few days, Umno supreme council member Lokman Noor Adam and his ad hoc group Pemantau Malaysia Baru has seized on MACC freezing bank accounts linked to the 1MDB probe as the main proof that Putrajaya has infringed on Najib and his family’s human rights.
Lokman and his group latched onto Najib’s daughter Nooryana Najwa’s claim that she could not access the RM100 in her son Adam’s bank account.
In a rally on Friday night, the group have since used the imagery of Adam’s “duit Raya” and pair of shoes “seized” by the MACC to elicit sympathy from the public.
The rally also saw the first mention of a group linked to them called CHaRM, which stands for Civil and Human Rights Movement Malaysia.
And yet, lest we forget, RM100 is peanuts to Najib’s family which for so long has enjoyed such indisputable privilege, and may still do.
Should we suddenly buy this image of Najwa being too broke to care for her son, when we have been exposed to her lavish wedding to Kazakh national Daniyar Kessibayev in KLCC, where the flowers alone allegedly cost RM3 million, and a gag order to prevent photos from leaking for fear of the public realising the opulence?
Or should we suddenly forget about the ridiculous numbers of luxury handbags, watches, tiaras and cash found in residences belonging to Najib and his family worth billions of ringgit?
Or how after the raids, they could still afford a luxurious Langkawi getaway accompanied — allegedly — by a mindboggling 30 pieces of luggage?
There is a concerted attempt by Najib and his supporters to portray the beleaguered man as a “victim of the system” and they have freely co-opted the language of human rights to prop up their narrative.
We must not fall for this.
And we must not ignore the fact that Najib’s family, and his children, are not innocent bystanders who have now suddenly come under attack by the authorities.
Let us not forget that they have not only profited massively from their position as then prime minister’s family, and would have continued to do so had the country not voted for change. Rather than being victims, they were complicit.
As for Najib’s zealots, the reason behind their rage is simple, yet similar. The fall of Barisan Nasional also meant the fall of the political patronage and feudalism, and with that, the disappearance of their own privileges and wealth.
