UMNO has announced the launch of a public fundraising campaign to help its former president Najib Razak pay the RM50 million fine attached to his corruption conviction.

The Najib Razak Solidarity Fund, announced on September 18, invites "party leaders, members and the public" to contribute voluntarily. Within three hours, it had raised more than RM630,000. Many contributors gave as little as RM10 and RM50.

Malaysians are donating their own money — money earned through honest work, money that could feed families, pay rent, or cover school fees — to help a man convicted of stealing RM42 million from a state-owned company.

What Najib Was Convicted Of

Najib was found guilty of seven charges — abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering — involving RM42 million belonging to SRC International, a former subsidiary of 1MDB.

The Federal Court upheld his conviction in 2022. He began serving his sentence at Kajang Prison that August. His original sentence was 12 years and a RM210 million fine. The Pardons Board reduced it to six years and RM50 million in 2024.

He also faces a separate 15-year sentence and an RM11.38 billion fine after being convicted last year in the 1MDB case involving more than RM2 billion. He is appealing that conviction.

The pardon does not overturn the convictions. It does not declare him innocent. It simply changes the manner in which he serves the remainder of his sentence. He remains, as The Vibes bluntly put it, "a convict. Essentially a crook and corrupt politician".

Why Should Anyone Pay?

Why should ordinary Malaysians, including UMNO members and the public who may be approached for donations contribute a single sen towards the fine of a politician who has been convicted of corruption-related offences?.

This is not a fundraising campaign for flood victims. It is not money being collected for a sick child or a natural disaster. It is money being raised to satisfy a condition attached to the house arrest of a convicted former prime minister.

If Najib cannot afford to pay the fine, he can serve his sentence in prison. That is how the justice system works. The fine is not a ransom. It is a penalty. And penalties are meant to be borne by the person who earned them.

The UMNO Defence

UMNO's defenders have tried to deflect. Former BN strategic communications deputy director Eric See-To argued that DAP has also raised funds for its leaders' bail and fines, asking why UMNO should be treated differently.

The comparison is weak. There is a difference between raising bail for someone accused of a crime — who is presumed innocent — and raising money to pay the criminal fine of someone who has been convicted by the highest court in the land, with the conviction upheld on appeal.

Ahmad Maslan, UMNO's Pontian division chief, insisted the fund is "not Najib's request" but "the wish of UMNO members". That may be true. But it does not change the fundamental question: why should the public subsidise the consequences of a criminal conviction?

The Forgotten Billions

What is most dispiriting about this campaign is not the money being raised. It is the memory being erased.

1MDB was not a victimless crime. It was not an abstract financial scandal that existed only in court documents and news headlines. It was a systematic looting of public funds on a scale that reshaped Malaysia's finances for a generation.

The money that disappeared from 1MDB — an estimated RM50 billion does not belong to a faceless corporation. It belonged to the Malaysian public. It was money that could have funded schools, hospitals, rural infrastructure, and development programmes. It was money that was supposed to serve the people. Instead, it was diverted, laundered, and spent on jewellery, luxury properties, and political survival.

And now, the man convicted of orchestrating that theft is asking for help paying his fine. And people are giving. That is not loyalty. That is a form of collective amnesia that makes a mockery of everything Malaysia went through. 

The trials. The court cases. The convictions. The international investigations that exposed how state funds were siphoned through shell companies in the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore. The tens of billions in debt that ordinary Malaysians are still paying off today.

It is one thing for UMNO members to defend their former president. It is another thing entirely for ordinary Malaysians — people who paid the price for what he did — to donate their money to him. That is not solidarity. It is forgetting. And forgetting is how the next scandal becomes possible.

What This Says About Accountability

The deeper problem is what this fundraising campaign signals about Malaysia's political culture.

When a party can mobilise its base to pay a convicted leader's fine, it sends a message that corruption has no real consequences for those with enough political support. The fine becomes not a punishment but a fundraising target. The conviction becomes not a stain but a rallying cry. Accountability becomes optional for those who command loyalty.

Here’s another uncomfortable question: who is actually donating? Will UMNO disclose major donors? If a handful of wealthy individuals are contributing millions, Malaysians are entitled to ask what they expect in return. If thousands of small contributors are donating RM10 each, then the question becomes even sharper: why are ordinary Malaysians giving their money to a man who stole from them?

The Bottom Line

Najib Razak owes RM50 million. He was convicted of corruption. He was sentenced by a court. The pardon changed his sentence, not his guilt.

If his supporters believe he deserves to be outside prison, they are free to make that argument. If UMNO believes its former president deserves its support, it is free to demonstrate that support with its own money.

But asking the Malaysian public to pay the fine of a convicted corrupt politician is not solidarity. It is audacity. 

And the fact that people are actually donating does not make it right. It makes it a symptom of a political culture that has learned nothing from 1MDB — and is determined to forget.