COMMENT | Do the majority of Malaysians care if Najib goes home?

COMMENT | Do the majority of Malaysians care if Najib goes home?

S Thayaparan

Published: Oct 5, 2026 7:45 AM


"You hear that, homey? You wanna go to jail or you wanna go home, huh?"

- Detective Alonzo Harris (Training Day)

COMMENT | The question that opens this piece is on the minds of many every time Umno wins electoral legitimacy in various state elections.

At this point, I wonder if Madani carrying out reforms would gain any traction with a majority of Malaysians looking to the far right for answers.


While Anthony Loke’s possible resignation as transport minister would hand Madani a symbolic black eye, it will hardly shift the needle. It won't sway those who view the coalition as interlopers in Malay-Muslim strongholds, nor will it re-engage minority voters who, dejected by stalled economic and social reforms, are quietly returning to the devil they knew.

Keep in mind, for decades Umno/BN was ushered in democratically while the opposition was languishing in the wilderness. And let us face facts, when coalitions are more or less shotgun weddings, suddenly corruption becomes a thing someone else does.

Remember these words from DAP's Lim Kit Siang?

"I've never said he's corrupt. You can go through all my statements. It's all on record. I've never said Dr Mahathir (Mohamad) is corrupt. I would say there were instances of power abuse and all that," he said in 2019.


And you wonder why people do not trust politicians or why they assume all politicians are corrupt.

Political apathy

In politics, anger is something that can be dealt with through the appropriate realignment of policy and agenda. What is worse is apathy. That is what is destroying Madani.



Do Pakatan Harapan political strategists really think that people who vote Umno/BN, especially in the recent state elections, did so because it was a vote for incarcerated ex-premier Najib Abdul Razak? What about the seats Harapan and DAP lost? Were those votes for Najib too?

This is not something new. In 2019, when Mohamad Hasan won the Rantau by-election, he said of his comfortable win, "There was non-stop attack against Najib as though he was the candidate."

He also said, "In other constituencies, people can say Umno won because there are a lot of Malay votes, (but that is not the case here)."

Is corruption really a big issue when it comes to a majority of Malaysians?

We have the influential preacher Zakir Naik, who was welcomed by political and religious figures under both BN and Harapan administrations, and who preached that it is better to vote for a corrupt Muslim than an honest non-Muslim.

Not to mention the religious political operatives like PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, who said that "integrity without Islam is not accepted by Allah, and a person with faith who has no integrity is still better than someone with integrity but no faith".

Free pass?

Let us face facts. The perception that Madani has given a free pass to certain Umno leaders on their corruption charges has diluted any kind of possible messaging to a majority of Malaysians.

We have a history of corruption scandals under the former Harapan prime minister Mahathir, which were whitewashed by the Harapan establishment. Even when Harapan was in power under Mahathir, allegations involving big names in Sabah and Sarawak were ignored because it was politically expedient to do so.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, whose platform on the campaign trail was governmental corruption and malfeasance, now risks becoming a symbol of accommodation for the elite political class.


Anwar claimed the charges against his number two, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, were politically motivated. He has defended convicted felon Najib’s reduced sentence. His home minister apparently has the power to define any location as a prison.

Bravo to former MACC chief Latheefa Koya and lawyer Lim Wei Jiet who belled the cat. Furthermore, when it came to the withdrawal of the appeal by the prosecution in the VLN corruption case, Latheefa again questioned this move. For rational Malaysians, what else could it be other than a political decision?

Religious-minded corrupt leaders

What do the Sabah scandal and Madani’s handling of it demonstrate to a majority of Malaysians? Well, it validates and legitimises everything their religious leaders and social media influencers claim about how it is normal to have religiously minded but corrupt leaders rather than honest leaders who are not of the faith.

Look at Anwar's former senior political secretary, Shamsul Iskandar Akin. After being charged with receiving bribes, he said, “God willing, I’ll prove my innocence. We will follow the legal path of the court process."

Look at all the immigration department scandals. This quote from Malaysiakini reporter B Nantha Kumar best exemplifies the kind of governmental corruption which has been normalised through successive governments in this country.

"The question now is: after yet another ministerial phone call and sweet promises of a 'best solution', how many more countries, and how many more workers trapped in debt, need to exist before Putrajaya stops rebuilding the same syndicate structure just under a new digital brand?"

Can you really blame a majority of people if they do not care if Najib goes home or at least vote that way?

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”