PAS must prove it’s not taken Umno money, says Zaid

(FMT) – Despite the allegations of large payments made to individuals and the Islamist party, not a single PAS leader has filed a lawsuit on the matter.

Zaid Ibrahim has lashed out at Temerloh MP Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi who claimed recently that there has so far been no proof that either Prime Minister Najib Razak or Umno has given his party lots of money.

Zaid said the onus is not on others but PAS to proof otherwise as there is enough reason to believe the allegations made against the party.

“No one will believe that PAS has been able to finance its slate of public programmes by collecting money from its members, as party leaders have claimed,” Zaid said, referring to the International Hudud Conference in Singapore and the World Ulamak meeting in Hadi’s hometown of Rusila in 2015, among others.

He added that the Islamist party has also been able to engage the best lawyers in the United Kingdom in its suit against Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown.

“So voters are entitled to assume that wealthy political allies are helping PAS financially, unless the party can show their financial accounts (duly audited) that they did indeed collect millions from their members.

“So you see, it’s not the voters who have to find proof about you and Najib, or the things you do together,” Zaid said in a blog post.

The former defacto law minister said it was also not surprising that despite the allegations of large payments made to individuals and the Islamist party, not a single PAS leader has filed a lawsuit on the matter.

“First it was Nasharudin Mat Isa, who is Najib’s close ally and one-time PAS deputy president, who had threatened PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli for alleging in a statutory declaration that the former received millions from Najib.

“But until today, we have not heard of him filing a suit.

“Then PAS Legal Committee head Wan Mutalib Embong threatened to sue Husam Musa for saying in a public speech a few months ago that Umno had made millions of ringgit available to PAS. Yet, Husam has not received any legal demands from PAS,” Zaid said.

He called for the people to reject pretenders who claim to be fighting for Islam, but in actual fact are just “having lots of fun making money”.