I just wanted clarity on Anwar’s pardon, says Akmal

(FMT) – Umno Youth chief Dr Akmal Saleh has dismissed a call by his PKR counterpart Adam Adli to retract remarks questioning whether the royal pardon granted to PKR president Anwar Ibrahim in 2018 had gone through the pardons board.

Akmal said that he was not questioning the pardon granted to Anwar but merely asking for clarity on the matter. “There’s a difference between asking and questioning,” he told FMT briefly in response to Adam’s earlier remarks.

Adam had urged Akmal to be more careful when issuing statements and should check basic facts by searching for them on Google. He said the pardon had been granted after consideration by the pardons board, and had been widely reported in the media at the time.

In a social media posting earlier today, Anwar’s political secretary, Kamil Munim, also advised Akmal to read and do his own homework. Kamil also posted an image of a press statement on 16 May 2018 from Istana Negara about the Anwar pardon.

Anwar received a full royal pardon that day, a week after Pakatan Harapan won power in a general election. He was freed after serving three years of his five-year jail term for a sodomy conviction.

He later told Parliament that the royal pardon was granted at the initiative of the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Muhammad V.

Akmal’s query about Anwar’s pardon arose after the Attorney-General’s Chambers said all pardon applications for offences committed in Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya must be submitted to the Federal Territories Pardons Board, which is chaired by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

Its statement was in response to speculation over a purported royal order allowing former prime minister Najib Razak to serve the remainder of his jail sentence under house arrest.

Source : FreeMalaysiaToday