After having sent former Prime Minister Najib Razak behind bars last August for 12 years, the Malaysian justice system indicted on March 11 for corruption one of his successors, the former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and current head of the opposition. Arrested on March 10, then released on bail, Mr. Muhyiddin, who was prime minister during the Covid, from March 2020 to August 2021, is the subject of an investigation by the Malaysian anti-corruption agency (MACC) relating to kickbacks allegedly cashed in his party, Bersatu, as part of the windfall of subsidies granted by his government during the pandemic.
Aged 75, Mr. Muhyiddin is facing four counts of abuse of power, involving the equivalent of 50 million euros, and two others for money laundering – a fraction of the billions disbursed to the name of the support of the economy during the Covid. He faces twenty years in prison. The investigation has led since mid-February to the freezing of Bersatu’s accounts, searches and the indictment of three other party leaders.
This dramatic turn of events comes barely three months after the November elections, which saw the reformist Anwar Ibrahim in the saddle for the first time as prime minister at the head of a motley coalition. A survivor of Malaysian politics, several times imprisoned, Mr. Anwar had campaigned on behalf of the fight against corruption and a multicultural and progressive Malaysia. However, to prevail over the coalition led by Muhyiddin, he had to make a pact after the election with his sworn enemy, the National Organization of Malay Unity (UMNO), the former ruling party of the 1960s. to 2018 and at the center of all the corruption cases of recent years – including the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund scandal which led to the downfall of Najib Razak.
Supremacist doctrine
Mr. Muhyiddin had endeavored to appear during the elections as a clean version of UMNO, a party with which he shares the supremacist doctrine of defense of the Malay majority to the detriment of the Chinese and Indian minorities, while allying with the rising conservative party in Malaysian politics, the party of Islamists.
The program pinpointed by MACC was designed to direct Covid-time grant tenders to companies run and owned by “Bumiputras”, that is to say “indigenous” citizens, mostly Malays, as opposed to Malaysians of Chinese or Indian origin, under the positive discrimination policy practiced in Malaysia. Except that the rules of government tenders as well as the selection procedures were not respected.
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