A group of political party leaders, including Perikatan Nasional (PN) deputy minister and senior politicians, came under fire for allegedly breaking the movement control order (MCO).
Deputy Health Minister I Datuk Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali, Perak exco Razman Zakaria and their entourage were apparently distributing donations as well as having a meal session together with a group of people at a tahfiz institution in Lenggong, Perak, reported MalayMail.
UMNO vice-president Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin took to his Instagram to address the matter. “Not any deputy minister but deputy minister of health, he didn’t set a good example during the current MCO period. In other countries like New Zealand, the health minister resigned for violating lockdown rules,” wrote the former Menteri Besar Johor.
He continued, “Even the public in respective countries expressing anger at the UK housing minister and South African communications minister for similar reason. We do not want to have different rules, leadership must demonstrate good example.”
In the meantime, Senior Minister (Security Cluster), Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaacob revealed in a press conference earlier today that the police will take action against everyone who break the MCO rule regardless of any social status, including VIPs.
“The law is for everyone. As I said, no one is above the law. I understand that police reports have been lodged and I will leave it to the police to take further action,” he was quoted as saying.
Additionally, Deputy Rural Development Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Mohamad found himself in hot water after a photo of him reportedly celebrating his birthday amid the partial lockdown period made its way online. Insisting that the event was not a celebratory gathering, he cleared the air by saying that he didn’t mean to violate the rule.
“It was all unplanned and I didn’t want to chase them away. I was leaving at around 9am when I saw them arriving with a cake. They told me that they wanted to wish me well on my journey to Putrajaya, and that they wanted to give me the cake as it was coincidentally my birthday that day. It would’ve been rude to turn them away,” he told The Star.
As for the question on why he was not wearing a face mask at that time, the Minister responded by saying that there was no advisory from the Health Ministry which stated that healthy individuals had to do so.
