The “mistake” of not speaking the truth in order to protect former Umno president Najib Abdul Razak is one he will have to live with for the rest of his life, said party Youth leader Khairy Jamaluddin.
In an interview with Channel News Asia, the Rembau MP said he wished that he had told Najib that the grassroots had rejected Umno, after former deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin and vice-president Mohd Shafie Apdal, were “purged” from the party.
“We didn’t want to bell the cat. Nobody, after Muhyiddin was purged, after Shafie was purged… Nobody wanted to acknowledge we have a problem. That was a terrible mistake on our part….
“This must not happen again, we must not ever allow our leaders in Umno to be detached from reality and not ask tough questions. If we continue with our feudal mindset of protecting the leader from the truth, Umno will go extinct,” he was quoted saying
Failure to stand up to Najib was not a ‘mistake’ it was a moral failure.
Khairy Jamaluddin and everyone in UMNO knew that Najib was criminally responsible over 1MDB, just the tip of the iceberg in a series of horrible crimes that Malaysia will now have to endure revelations about in detail.
This rogue leader and his wife were poised to take the country into the depths of dark tyranny in the course of their many cover-ups. And yet the only people who could place a check on them, Khairy and his colleagues from UMNO, not only failed to act, they cheered the monsters on and facilitated the near destruction of a democracy.
Only thanks to the courage of Malaysia’s rag-tag opposition of brave individuals, who put aside their many differences for the greater good, and to the people who swarmed to support their sacrifice has the country been saved.
Making a mistake is one thing. Failing to do what you know to be right and condoning shocking evil is another.