KJ: Cases against Umno leaders won’t be dropped, image must be restored

KJ: Cases against Umno leaders won’t be dropped, image must be restored


GE15 | Khairy Jamaluddin wants to cleanse Umno and according to him Ismail Sabri Yaakob and Hishammuddin Hussein are on the same page as well.

“Ismail, Hisham and I are quite firm in where we want to take Umno to make sure our image is restored,” he said in an interview with BFM.

Responding to a question on Umno being tainted due to corruption, the outgoing health minister stressed that the court cases would not be dropped if BN returned to power.

“It is very important for Umno leaders like myself to openly state that there will be no interference in the judicial process.

“We don't want to be known as the ‘other party’ which drops cases involving leaders and it is important. I have told Ismail Sabri that this must be our position when we are back in power, just as before when he did not interfere in the judicial process or even think about it,” he added.

Although Khairy did not mention the name of the “other party”, it was an obvious reference to DAP and the “bungalow” case against its national chairperson Lim Guan Eng.

Umno’s former president Najib Abdul Razak was hauled to prison to serve a 12-year prison sentence under Ismail Sabri’s watch, much to the chagrin of the former premier’s supporters, while the present leader Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is facing a deluge of corruption charges.

‘We have been through hell’

Meanwhile, Khairy said he believes Umno is a “good party made up of good people” and reforming it is not a distant agenda.

“We know there will be a party election right after the general election, that is why you have this new crop of leaders, not just myself but like (Umno information chief) Shahril Hamdan and (former Umno Youth deputy chief) Khairul Azwan Harun.

“I want to see them winning places in the division, I want to see them replacing some of the older leaders to show that Umno is changing. This is not going to be a five or 10-year project, it will happen right after the election,” he added.

Asked if it is possible for Umno to reform from within, Khairy said this might not have been possible in the past.

“But we have been through hell. We lost the government and there is the realisation on the ground,” he added.

Khairy also recalled his decision to contest for the Umno presidency after the 2018 general election.

“Everyone thought I was the spoiler but I see Ku Li (Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah) as the spoiler. If our votes (votes cast for the two of them) combined, I would have become the president of Umno,” he added.

To another question on his pushing for reform now despite having spent two decades in Umno and holding various posts, he replied: “I think the tune of reform has always been there. Some people said… it takes time but I think I am ready now, I have matured as a politician..”

On his support for Najib amid the 1MDB scandal which contradicts his current reform agenda, Khairy replied that much had unravelled behind closed doors.

“A lot of internal dissents took place (during the height of the scandal) and of course, that is not an excuse, but externally, we wanted to project unity in the run-up to the last election.

“Of course, after we lost, I made the decision that enough is enough, we cannot continue to condone this, this is not the ‘bossku party’ anymore…” he added.

In hindsight, Khairy conceded that he should have been more vocal.

“That is perhaps going to be one of my biggest regrets in my career but we make mistakes and we own up to them and hopefully, we can make up for them,” he added.