KUALA LUMPUR: His body and soul might be Umno but Datuk Seri Mohamed Ali Rustam can appeal to the Registrar of Societies (ROS) to stop the Umno elections as his rights have been deprived, party maverick Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said today.
Writing in his popular razaleigh.com weblog, the Kelantan prince said it is wrong to deprive the Umno vice-president of his candidacy or his right to vote as long as he remains a member.
“Mohd Ali can appeal to the Registrar of Societies to put a stop to the Elections if he is unlawfully deprived of his eligibility for office. At the very least, his appeal against his punishment needs to be heard before the party elections commence next week,” Tengku Razaleigh wrote in his latest post.
Ali has already filed an appeal against the Umno disciplinary board decision to bar him from contesting the deputy presidency after he was found guilty of breaching party ethics while campaigning. Umno Youth chief aspirant Khairy Jamaluddin was warned for a similar offence while rival Datuk Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo was cleared of the offence.
Tengku Razaleigh wrote that he did not see how the disciplinary board can bar Ali from contesting as long as he was a party member as the Societies Act defined the “eligibility to hold office in the committee or governing body of the society,” along with the right to vote, as a constitutional right of every member.
“The disciplinary board can remove certain privileges but not rights provided by the Constitution. Umno’s constitution cannot be interpreted contrary to the Societies Act,” he added. pointing out that Umno supreme council member Datuk Norza Zakaria, who has been charged for corruption, is still a candidate.
“What holds for Norza holds for Mohd Ali too. Members may not be barred from contesting,” the Gua Musang MP said.
He also questioned the disciplinary board’s investigations into money politics within Umno. “The disciplinary board has found that Mohd Ali was involved in political bribery through his agents. However has the board also investigated every member alleged to have received those bribes?”
“Has the board traced the entire trail of inducements, monetary or in kind, identified every culpable participant, and suspended his membership?” he asked, saying the tainted votes would taint the entire party elections.
He recommended that the properly resourced and properly independent agency to do this is the newly-minted Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), not the Umno disciplinary board.
“So long as no thorough investigation by an independent agency has been conducted, there remains a real likelihood that the party elections will be tainted by corruption, and hence illegitimate,” said Tengku Razaleigh, who only received one nomination to run for the party presidency.
Calling corruption a criminal matter, he said MACC was properly instituted and not just designed to be used only against the opposition and members of the public as money politics is “nothing but a euphemism for political bribery, and political bribery is a crime covered by the Penal Code”.
“Similarly, if the disciplinary board has found Mohd Ali guilty of bribery, direct or indirect, it is legally required to report him and his agents to the MACC and to hand over all the evidence it has collected to the MACC and to the Registrar of Societies immediately.
“If the board fails to report and submit all the evidence of corruption it has found, it risks making Umno, as a party, accomplice to corruption, in which case the Registrar of Societies is required to act against it,” Tengku Razaleigh said, adding the panel cannot replace the courts
He wrote that the panel’s duties were to investigate and punish violation of the party’s ethics code and it should report any legal violations instead of passing judgment.
”I don’t recall Parliament having passed an Act to exempt Umno from the laws of the land. It’s not as if there is a misdemeanour of ‘money politics’ for Umno, and ‘corrupt practices’ for everyone else,” he said, saying corruption was a cancer eating through the bones of society.
“It is destroying Malaysia. If Umno closes an eye to it, Umno makes itself the enemy of the Malays, their corruptor rather than their champion. There is no chance of our tackling this pestilence if our actions suggest that corruption is ok for some people some of the time.
“Umno’s leadership should be mindful of the fact that the party of Merdeka is now almost universally viewed as corrupt beyond redemption. Yet they talk of reform and transparency, and by their actions promise ‘not under their watch’,” the veteran politician said bluntly.
In an earlier post during the day, he wrote that the public has a right to more information about the disciplinary board’s investigations and conclusions as “party positions of national interest are at stake”.
“If Umno expects its leaders to be national leaders it cannot deem their candidacy to be private matters,” he said, pointing out that Ali was seen as the leading candidate for the party deputy presidency and by convention, for the deputy prime minister’s post.
“Barring him from the elections is a very serious step which must be justified with full disclosure of the facts that gave rise to the judgment. The board owes it to the public, what more to his supporters.
“The same applies in the case of the warning given to Khairy, which is going to hurt his candidacy in the elections,” Tengku Razaleigh said.
He also pointed out that people are questioning the board’s decisions to only penalise candidates aligned to outgoing Prime Minister and party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
“Are they the only ones guilty of corruption? The perception of selective prosecution and political conspiracy will not go away until the board gives a clearer account of what has been investigated and what has not, and of what has been found,” he said, adding he sympathised with their difficulties in doing justice but they had to address public concerns for fairness and transparency.
Malaysian insider
19/03/09
Writing in his popular razaleigh.com weblog, the Kelantan prince said it is wrong to deprive the Umno vice-president of his candidacy or his right to vote as long as he remains a member.
“Mohd Ali can appeal to the Registrar of Societies to put a stop to the Elections if he is unlawfully deprived of his eligibility for office. At the very least, his appeal against his punishment needs to be heard before the party elections commence next week,” Tengku Razaleigh wrote in his latest post.
Ali has already filed an appeal against the Umno disciplinary board decision to bar him from contesting the deputy presidency after he was found guilty of breaching party ethics while campaigning. Umno Youth chief aspirant Khairy Jamaluddin was warned for a similar offence while rival Datuk Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo was cleared of the offence.
Tengku Razaleigh wrote that he did not see how the disciplinary board can bar Ali from contesting as long as he was a party member as the Societies Act defined the “eligibility to hold office in the committee or governing body of the society,” along with the right to vote, as a constitutional right of every member.
“The disciplinary board can remove certain privileges but not rights provided by the Constitution. Umno’s constitution cannot be interpreted contrary to the Societies Act,” he added. pointing out that Umno supreme council member Datuk Norza Zakaria, who has been charged for corruption, is still a candidate.
“What holds for Norza holds for Mohd Ali too. Members may not be barred from contesting,” the Gua Musang MP said.
He also questioned the disciplinary board’s investigations into money politics within Umno. “The disciplinary board has found that Mohd Ali was involved in political bribery through his agents. However has the board also investigated every member alleged to have received those bribes?”
“Has the board traced the entire trail of inducements, monetary or in kind, identified every culpable participant, and suspended his membership?” he asked, saying the tainted votes would taint the entire party elections.
He recommended that the properly resourced and properly independent agency to do this is the newly-minted Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), not the Umno disciplinary board.
“So long as no thorough investigation by an independent agency has been conducted, there remains a real likelihood that the party elections will be tainted by corruption, and hence illegitimate,” said Tengku Razaleigh, who only received one nomination to run for the party presidency.
Calling corruption a criminal matter, he said MACC was properly instituted and not just designed to be used only against the opposition and members of the public as money politics is “nothing but a euphemism for political bribery, and political bribery is a crime covered by the Penal Code”.
“Similarly, if the disciplinary board has found Mohd Ali guilty of bribery, direct or indirect, it is legally required to report him and his agents to the MACC and to hand over all the evidence it has collected to the MACC and to the Registrar of Societies immediately.
“If the board fails to report and submit all the evidence of corruption it has found, it risks making Umno, as a party, accomplice to corruption, in which case the Registrar of Societies is required to act against it,” Tengku Razaleigh said, adding the panel cannot replace the courts
He wrote that the panel’s duties were to investigate and punish violation of the party’s ethics code and it should report any legal violations instead of passing judgment.
”I don’t recall Parliament having passed an Act to exempt Umno from the laws of the land. It’s not as if there is a misdemeanour of ‘money politics’ for Umno, and ‘corrupt practices’ for everyone else,” he said, saying corruption was a cancer eating through the bones of society.
“It is destroying Malaysia. If Umno closes an eye to it, Umno makes itself the enemy of the Malays, their corruptor rather than their champion. There is no chance of our tackling this pestilence if our actions suggest that corruption is ok for some people some of the time.
“Umno’s leadership should be mindful of the fact that the party of Merdeka is now almost universally viewed as corrupt beyond redemption. Yet they talk of reform and transparency, and by their actions promise ‘not under their watch’,” the veteran politician said bluntly.
In an earlier post during the day, he wrote that the public has a right to more information about the disciplinary board’s investigations and conclusions as “party positions of national interest are at stake”.
“If Umno expects its leaders to be national leaders it cannot deem their candidacy to be private matters,” he said, pointing out that Ali was seen as the leading candidate for the party deputy presidency and by convention, for the deputy prime minister’s post.
“Barring him from the elections is a very serious step which must be justified with full disclosure of the facts that gave rise to the judgment. The board owes it to the public, what more to his supporters.
“The same applies in the case of the warning given to Khairy, which is going to hurt his candidacy in the elections,” Tengku Razaleigh said.
He also pointed out that people are questioning the board’s decisions to only penalise candidates aligned to outgoing Prime Minister and party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
“Are they the only ones guilty of corruption? The perception of selective prosecution and political conspiracy will not go away until the board gives a clearer account of what has been investigated and what has not, and of what has been found,” he said, adding he sympathised with their difficulties in doing justice but they had to address public concerns for fairness and transparency.
Malaysian insider
19/03/09
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