Call on Muhyiddin to make public the report of the Health Ministry internal investigation on Khairuddin’s violation of the Covid 19 quarantine SOP

The admission by the Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah that top Ministry officials were in the dark about Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali's violation of home quarantine rules until last week is quite a shocker.

Equally astounding is that an internal investigation into the series of events following the minister’s July 7 return from Turkey has been kept as a secret from the public.

At yesterday’s press conference, Noor Hisham admitted that he, along with the ministry’s deputy director-general and head of infectious diseases, were not informed about the matter until it made the news.

He said he instructed an internal investigation to be held and he has received the full report of what happened from the ground.

Khairuddin has established quite a number of new political records – including having some 50,000 people signing an online petition asking him to resign as Minister.

When Khairuddin’s violation of the Covid-19 quarantine SOP revealed by MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok in Parliament last Tuesday, it caused a national furore of anger and outrage largely because of Khairuddin’s prevarication and misinformation, including the claim that the Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, had approved Khairuddin’s Turkey trip; that there was a “special test” for Ministers and VVIPs so that they could leave and return to the country; and that Turkey was at the time as “green country (zone)” when in fact it was one of the epicentres of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result, an online petition was started calling on Khairuddin to resign as a Cabinet Minister.

It had about 24,000 signatures until the new development on Saturday evening, when the Health Ministry admitted that Khairuddin had indeed violated the quarantine SOP on July 7, together with the statement that the Health Ministry had imposed a RM1,000 fine on August 7 and which had been paid.

Public anger and outrage knew no bounds and the online petition for Khairuddin’s resignation more than doubled since then.

Khairuddin completely misread the public mood and sentiment when he expressed his apology and his “donation” of his salary as a Minister from May to August to the Covid19 Fund - as if money is the answer to what is morally right and wrong, together with the growing abomination of double standards in Malaysian public life.

The Prime Minister’s statement one week after the Khairuddin charade and the government’s other anodyne responses are just not adequate enough to satisfy the larger Malaysian population.

What has Muhyiddin and the government to hide over the public disclosure of the Health Ministry’s internal investigation on Khairuddin’s violation of the Covid 19 quarantine SOP?

I call on Muhyiddin to instantly make public the report of the Health Ministry internal investigation on Khairuddin’s violation of the Covid 19 quarantine SOP and let the axe fall where it may.

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri