If ‘supplementary order’ is genuine, wrong for govt to hide it, says lawyer

Lawyer Haniff Khatri Abdulla says the government had the opportunity to meet the former king to reverse a purported supplementary order issued with regard to Najib Razak’s house arrest.

PETALING JAYA: If the former king had indeed issued a “supplementary order” allowing Najib Razak to serve the remainder of his jail sentence under house arrest, then the government would have acted wrongly by “hiding” it, a lawyer says.

Haniff Khatri Abdulla said the government’s recourse, if it was unhappy with the purported order, would be to seek an audience with the king and ask that it be reversed.

Haniff said representatives from the government had the opportunity to meet former Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah when he was still in power for that purpose, as the pardon was granted one day before his term of office expired on Jan 30.

“If they feel that the command was invalid (under the Federal Constitution), they should not have hidden it.

“Instead, (they should have) corrected the command,” he said during a discussion with a YouTuber yesterday evening.

Haniff said the process would apply regardless of who the pardoned person was, adding that the monarch was empowered by law to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone, even serial killers and rapists.

On April 1, Najib commenced legal proceedings in the High Court to compel the government to produce a supplementary order purportedly issued by Al-Sultan Abdullah.

Najib claimed that Al-Sultan Abdullah issued the supplementary order during the Federal Territories Pardons Board’s meeting on Jan 29.

He alleged that the “addendum order” was not announced by the board on Feb 2, and claimed the government was acting in contempt for not executing it.

In an affidavit filed in support of Najib’s application which surfaced yesterday, Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was reported to have confirmed the existence of the purported order issued on Jan 29.

Zahid, the deputy prime minister, claimed to have viewed a copy of the purported order on Tengku Zafrul Aziz’s mobile phone during a meeting at the former’s house.

In a statement yesterday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz said he would seek to file his own affidavit in the proceedings to correct “factual errors” in Zahid’s affidavit.

Commenting on the matter, former Umno Supreme Council member Isham Jalil asked whether home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail had spoken the truth when he claimed to be unaware of the purported order.

“If what Zahid said is true, then it makes it look like Saifuddin and the government lied and hid the matter,” he said in a Facebook post.

Meanwhile, unity government spokesman Fahmi Fadzil said the Cabinet had never discussed Najib’s court application or Zahid’s affidavit in support.