The problem with Najib’s apology

The problem with Najib’s apology


Oct 27, 2024

Nehru Sathiamoorthy


Although the media is saying that Najib has apologised to Malaysians unreservedly for the 1MDB fiasco, what Najib has done should not actually be described as an apology. Instead, a better way of describing what Najib has done, is that he has taken “command responsibility” for the 1MDB fiasco, albeit in a watered-down fashion.

Command responsibility is perhaps best explained by the Yamashita Standard.

General Tomoyuki Yamashita was a famous Japanese general who was nicknamed the Tiger of Malaya because he managed to defeat the British and conquer Malaya during World War 2.

After the war, Yamashita was hanged for war crimes, despite the fact that he did not order or was personally responsible for the atrocities committed by the soldiers under his command.

During his trial, Yamashita would claim that he had tried his best to prevent any wartime atrocities, by ordering his soldiers to not commit arson, looting or rape. He would also claim that he had warned his soldiers that if he found out that they had disobeyed orders, they would be harshly punished. Considering that he was commanding a huge army and he had done what he could to make them behave, he would then ask for the court that tried him to not hold him responsible for the wartime atrocities that had occurred under his watch, just because some of the soldiers under his command disobeyed orders and went around beheading civilians and catching babies with bayonets.

Despite his pleas, the court would find him guilty and hang Yamashita anyway.

In the same way that Yamashita admitted that the mass atrocities that occurred during the period of Japanese Occupation in the region was wrong, while denying that he was personally responsible for it, Najib is also admitting that what happened with 1MDB was wrong, while insisting that he is personally innocent of any wrongdoing.

“It pains me every day that the 1MDB debacle happened when I was the prime minister and finance minister, and I would like to apologise unreservedly,” Najib said in a statement that was read by his son, Nizar, at the lobby of the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex.

“I am still in deep shock knowing now the extent of the wretched and unconscionable shenanigans and illegal things that happened in 1MDB.”

“Being held legally responsible for the things that I did not initiate or knowingly enable is unfair to me and I hope and pray that the judicial process will, in the end, prove my innocence.”

According to Najib, since he had already been punished politically over the affair, he did not think that he “should not be victimised legally, too”.

In other words, Najib is not apologising for his wrongdoings or even admitting that he had done anything wrong. He is just accepting his role as the “general” of 1MDB, and admitting that what his team at 1MDB had done to Malaysians was wrong, before apologising to Malaysians for the role that 1MDB played in the wrongdoing, while insisting that he personally had no part in the wrongdoings.

The problem with Najib’s apology, just like the problem with Yamashita’s apology before him, is that the scale of the debacle that occurred is so immense, that it is unlikely that neither of them were not aware of what was happening.

In the case of Yamashita, more than 50,000 people were killed during the Sook Ching massacre in the then Malaya and Singapore in a span of less than a month. In the Rape of Manila, 100,000 Filipinos were murdered and raped, also in less than a month. The infamous Death Railway that the Japanese built to connect Siam and Thailand also likely took another 100,000 civilian life.

Considering the scale of the disaster, it beggars belief that Yamashita was so ignorant of what was going on under his command, to not even discipline one of his officers for being involved in it, despite the fact that he had years to do so.


The more likely scenario is that Yamashita did in fact know about what was going on in his command, but he simply chose to turn a blind eye on the matter.

In the same way, for Najib to say that he is in deep shock after knowing the extent of the wretched and unconscionable shenanigans and illegal things that happened in 1MDB, is just too taxing to be believed.

The 1MDB scandal has been described as “one of the world’s greatest financial scandals” and declared by the United States Department of Justice as the “largest kleptocracy case to date” in 2016 itself, when Najib was the Prime Minister.

At one point, Najib had RM 2 billion ringgit in his personal bank account.

Najib’s stepson Riza Aziz was spending hundreds of millions of dollars making Hollywood movies. In one of the movies, The Wolf of Wall Street, the credits will even thank Jho Low, one of the key figures behind the 1MDB fiasco.

From foreign agencies to prominent local personalities to his own bank account, there were just too many things pointing to the fact that all is rotten in the state of Denmark for years, for Najib to conveniently come to us now and tell us that he had no idea about what was happening behind his back and that he is just as shocked as us to find out about it now, now that the chickens had come home to roost.

And even if despite the odds, Najib is in fact truly ignorant of what was going on under his watch, as the precedent set in the Yamashita case, there is such a thing called command responsibility or the Yamashita standard, whereby a commander can be held accountable before the law for the crimes committed by his troops even if he did not order them, didn’t stand by to allow them, or possibly even know about them or have the means to stop them.

Following this standard, Najib should accept responsibility for his actions and resign himself to be punished over it, even if he truly didn’t know anything about it and is innocent of it.

There is a reason why a leader of any group or organisation is given the most important seat and a red carpet welcome in the organisation, although the leader does not toil or labour for the organisation.

The reason is because the leader of the group or organisation is expected to shoulder the responsibility for the successes or the failures of the organisation.

If 1MDB had been successful, Najib would have been the foremost person in receiving the credits.

Now that it has failed, Najib should not rue the fact that he is foremost in being blamed for it either, or insist that the failure of the organisation should not be hoisted on his shoulders to bear.

If he didn’t want to bear the responsibility, he should have declined the red carpet welcome and the most prominent seat given to him by the organisation.

After he had accepted it, it was incumbent upon him to see to it that the organisation succeeded, failing which, he, like a good captain, should just resign himself to go down with his ship, when his ship fails to reach its intended destination.