No Umno rule to discipline Bung for Hitler tweet, says Najib
(The Malay Mail) – Umno does not have any internal regulation to penalise Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin for his controversial tweet saluting Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today following widespread calls for stern action against his wayward party colleague.
Admitting his party lacked rules to deal with members who express views that ran counter to its stand on social media, the Umno president stressed that Bung Moktar had been reprimanded for his action.
“We do not have specific regulations for social media but I have reminded party members that any views they expressed more or less reflect the party as well as the supreme council’s views,” he told reporters after chairing Umno’s supreme council meeting here.
“That is why I took the decision to reprimand him and he had retracted and apologised. He knows our stand, meaning if you say something, it can’t go against our party principles.
“We have advised him. It was a serious reprimand,” Najib added.
In the euphoria following Germany’s thrashing of Brazil during the World Cup semi-finals on Wednesday morning, Bung Moktar tweeted a salute to Hitler and drew a flurry of criticism from other Twitters users.
An unrepentant Bung then heaped abuse on them. “Well done… Bravo… Long live Hitler…” the federal lawmaker posted on the microblogging site via the Twitter handle @MyKinabatangan.
He later claimed the tweet was made in jest, and that he was commending the German team for “fighting like” Hitler.
He subsequently apologised moments after Najib condemned the remarks as “unacceptable and wrong”.
The Barisan Nasional (BN) MP took to his Twitter page to issue the apology, saying he had “unintentionally” hurt the feelings of Germans with his remarks, which has sparked international outrage.
The Kinabatangan MP’s apology comes minutes after the PM’s series of tweets condemning the Umno lawmaker and attempts at damage control over the negative publicity Bung’s remarks have caused.
Austrian-born Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany between 1934 and 1945, and was at the centre of World War II. Hitler was also behind the Holocaust, the mass extermination and execution of millions of European Jews in concentration camps.
Germany’s ambassador to Malaysia, Holger Michael, objected to Bung’s salute of Hitler in his praise for the country’s performance in the World Cup, saying the comparison was “unacceptable”.
In a statement emailed to The Malay Mail Online, Michael said: “While we appreciate the admiration for the German football team, we strongly reject the unacceptable allusion to the fascist regime of Adolf Hitler,” the ambassador said in a statement.”
But Bung Moktar stuck to his guns, insisting on his Twitter page later that that the ambassador “doesn’t get it”.
Bung’s Hitler salute has since made headlines in a number of well-known foreign publications such as UK’s BBC and Daily Mail and US’s The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.
