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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright April 2023
Let's begin with a parable:
"A thief, before being hanged, asked if he could see the king, because he has something very important to tell His Majesty.
During the audience, the thief told the king that he knew how to plant trees which could bear fruits of gold.
The king and his courtiers became curious and eager to know how truth of the story.
The thief told the king and his courtiers that such a tree would only grow if it was planted by an honest person.
So the thief asked the king to plant the tree. The king turned to his entourage and asked for volunteers. No one stepped forward.
In the end, neither the king, nor the Prime Minister, nor any of his courtiers felt honest enough to step forward to plant the tree.
Subsequently, the king pardoned the thief."
The above story is adapted from Brainly, a company that operates a platform for asking and answering homework questions. It has 350 million monthly users, making it the world's most popular education site on the web.
Meanwhile in KL, UMNO has announced that they would appeal to the king to pardon Najib, sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for CBT by misappropriating a total of RM42 million.
Unlike the thief in the parable above, Najib does not grow trees that bear fruits of gold. But he is what some regard as a "rain maker" able to raise lots of funds for his party.
Should the king pardon the rain maker?
The final decision, of course rests upon the King who will decide as advised by the Prime Minister based upon a recommendation from the Pardons Board of the Federal Territories.
At the same time, two petitions related to the pardon for release of Najib have been launched on the change.org platform named as "Petition to Yang di-Pertuan Agong: Najib is Unworthy of Pardon" started by the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) and "Free Najib Razak Through Royal Pardon" created by an individual, Ariff Lias.
Awani's survey showed that the first petition received the most number of signatures at 140,000 while "Free Najib Razak Through Royal Pardon" petition received only 13,000 signatures.
The above surveys clearly show that the general public is not in favour of Najib being pardoned.
Meanwhile, in the case of the thief, not a single person dared to step forward because they doubt their own honesty was good enough to plant a golden tree and certainly were in no position to pass judgement on the criminal fairly.
In the second case it matters not what those in the pardons board say because the king shall be guided by the PM's advice as to the course of action to be taken against Najib: to pardon or not to pardon the prisoner for his crimes in the SRC International case. A strong PM could sway decision either way.
If Anwar were to make a recommendation to release him, going against the prevailing public opinion, he might end up becoming less popular with most voters and even his own main coalition partner, the DAP.
In GE14 Pakatan Harapan won on a ticket about getting Najib to jail. Now it is in power again, it is faced with the question about freeing Najib from jail. How ironic!
In any case, PMX is strongly supported by UMNO's 26 MPs to make the majority for him to stay in office. That issue will probably be foremost on his mind when he attends the pardons board meeting.
He knows that the sentiment to free Bossku is very strong in the party. Some like RPK goes to the extent of saying that chances are if Anwar does not interfere in making the decision by the Pardons Board then he might lose 26 UMNO MPs who might walk out in protest. But if he did, he would be an unpopular PM with the masses but will survive the threat of being a minority government with the possibility of being toppled should Sarawak follow suit in the footsteps of UMNO.
So, the opinion expressed by MalaysiaNow which states that "as long as Anwar does not interfere in the process of pardon, there was no question of his administration's survival coming under threat in the event of Najib leaving jail" may not be totally true. In fact the survival of Anwar Ibrahim and subsequently his close ally Zahid depend on PMX's course of action to guide the pardons board to free Najib.
In sum, the case of the thief being freed by the king and the crimes committed by Bossku being pardoned by the Agong have many similarities.
In the first case, not many dishonest people want to cast the first stone fearing it would kill the promise of gold that might not spring from a fictitious tree should they have a hand in planting it.
On the other hand, in the second case, honesty too has little to play in making a decision on freeing Najib from prison. It has a lot more to do with political survival.
In fact, it would boost the survival of this so called "unity" government to deploy Najib in the coming state elections to help cash in on his popularity as a weapon against the Green Wave movement mounted by the opposition.
In case of Bossku, the rain maker, the YDPA would have to listen to the advice of his Prime Minister whom we hope and pray will be guided by Divine wisdom.
Mihar Dias is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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