The day he was sacked by his party for failure to stick up for his embattled boss, Malaysia’s former deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has labeled Prime Minister Najib Razak a “dictator” trying to rule the country by suppressing human rights.<\/p>\n
Muhyiddin Yassin claimed in a statement Saturday that Razak has misused his powers to suppress voices of opposition in Malaysia and subsequently silence them.<\/p>\n
“We are currently witnessing a collapse of democratic institutional and an emerging dictator,” he said, a day after being removed as deputy president of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) — a position he held since 2009.<\/p>\n
UMNO is the major political party in an alliance that has ruled Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957.<\/p>\n
Muhyiddin Yassin claimed his removal from an elected position was undemocratic and brokered by Razak due to personal vengeance and followed by the UMNO supreme council for the premier’s favour.<\/p>\n
In the past year, Yassin has continuously criticized Razak over the discovery of $681 million in his bank accounts later attributed to a political donation, and mass losses at state-owned investment vehicle 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).<\/p>\n
On Saturday, the ousted leader pledged to continue championing institutional reforms and upholding the truth for what he called “better governance in Malaysia”.<\/p>\n
For that purpose, he said institutional reforms must be more holistic as it was not enough to have the prime minister removed from office.<\/p>\n
“All decision-making bodies’ chiefs must not be appointed by King on the advice of the prime minister. The Attorney-General\u2019s Chambers, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Central Bank and the police must all be left to perform their functions without anybody\u2019s interference,” he said in his statement.<\/p>\n
Muhyiddin Yassin underlined that the current law allows the prime minister to become very powerful and invincible before the law.<\/p>\n
“He can commit any crime and escape punishment. This is unfair and is against the principle that all men are equal before the law,” he said.<\/p>\n
Muhyiddin Yassin had been deputy prime minister since 2009, but was dropped in a cabinet reshuffle last July after openly questioning Razak about 1MDB.<\/p>\n
In being sacked, Muhyiddin Yassin joined imprisoned former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim as the only two Malaysian deputy prime ministers sacked while holding positions.<\/p>\n
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has opened three investigations into Razak over the funds, and two into the finance ministry’s SRC International — a former subsidiary of debt-ridden 1MDB — after international media released reports in July quoting documents from a probe into 1MDB \u2013 Razak’s brainchild \u2013 that claimed that $700 million (or 2.67 billion Ringgit) from 1MDB ended up in Razak’s accounts.<\/p>\n
The premier responded to the allegations by insisting that he had not swindled funds for personal gain, be it from 1MDB, SRC International or other entities.<\/p>\n
In August, the Attorney General’s Chambers revealed that the funds were not from 1MBD, but political donations to the UMNO for the party to remain in power during the 13th General Election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The day he was sacked by his party for failure to stick up for his embattled boss, Malaysia’s former deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has labeled Prime Minister Najib Razak a “dictator” trying to rule the country by suppressing human rights. Muhyiddin Yassin claimed in a statement Saturday that Razak has misused his powers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":36150,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":648,"height":369,"file":"2015\/07\/Muhyiddin_1mdb_umno_bn_600_1.jpg","filesize":52378,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":36147,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Muhyiddin_1mdb_umno_bn_600_1.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}