WITH his appeal in the SRC International Sdn Bhd case at the Federal Court hanging in the balance with his new legal team ‘threatening to withdraw’ – hence the eventuality of the Federal Court upholding his conviction which shall automatically make him ineligible to contest in the forthcoming 15th General Election (GE15) – former premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak has to be quick-witted.
He has to swiftly identify a candidate to fill the vacant slot, prompting Malay news portal Utusan Malaysia to speculate Datuk Mohd Nizar – Najib’s eldest son (among five siblings) with his first wife Tengku Puteri Zainah Tengku Eskandar – as the most obvious candidate.
“The son of Najib Razak and first wife Tengku Puteri Zainah is the most likely candidate to continue the legacy of the late Tun Abdul Razak,” reports Utusan Malaysia.
Interestingly, the report went on to mention that it has yet to be decided which of the four state seats – Pulau Manis, Peramu Jaya, Bebar and Chini – that the 44 year-old UMNO Pekan Division Youth chief since 2018 would be contesting. All the four seats are held by Barisan Nasional.
Recall that during the Chini by-election on July 4, 2020, Mohd Nizar was one of the names bandied about before Mohd Sharim Md Zain was chosen by BN to contest there. Sharim eventually defeated two other Independent candidates, Tengku Zainul Hisham Tengku Hussin (former deputy division chief of Bersatu Pekan) and Mohd Shukri Mohd Ramli (social activist), by a majority of 12,650 votes.
To recap, Najib’s new defence team from Messrs Zaid Ibrahim Suffian TH Liew & Partners has expressed their intention to discharge themselves from acting for the incumbent Pekan MP if their new appeal to postpone the hearing in court next Monday (Aug 15) fails.
Last December, the Court of Appeal dismissed Najib’s appeal to overturn the SRC International case guilty ruling by then Kuala Lumpur High Court judge Datuk Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali.
The Court of Appeal had also infamously branded Najib’s conduct in the misappropriation of funds from SRC International – a former subsidiary company of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) – as a “national embarrassment”.
Unlike his father who has made numerous headlines for the wrong reasons, Nizar has been keeping a low-profile except on Sept 4 last year when Najib disputed news reports claiming that Nizar agreed to pay RM13.16 mil in tax arrears to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) when the amount to be paid after reaching a settlement was a lot less.
“It was far, far, far less. It proves that the figure imposed on my son by the IRB during Pakatan Harapan’s time was excessive and politically motivated,” he wrote in a Facebook posting.
“However, the actual figure cannot be revealed publicly because of a confidentiality clause imposed by the IRB. We will not protest if IRB wants to make it public.”
According to information made available on Wikipedia, Nizar is both a consultant and accountant married to Nur Sharmila Shaheen in 2004 and is blessed with five children.
If indeed Nizar does succeed Najib, then he stands a chance to be the third-generation Pekan MP in the Razak family tree (not discounting the possibility of a third-generation prime minister in the future).
The eldest of six siblings, Najib was 23 years old when he began his political career after the death of his father Tun Abdul Razak Hussein on Jan 14, 1976.
In GE14, Najib retained the Pekan seat with a 24,859 majority. He secured 43,854 votes in a four-cornered contest in the Pekan parliamentary seat. – Aug 11, 2022
