he Immigration Department will ban those who have disgraced the nation and deemed as a threat to the national security from leaving the country, its director-general Datuk Seri Mustafa Ibrahim said.
He said the department had powers to blacklist such individuals, reported The Star today.
“We are also in the verge of blacklisting those who are believed to be involved in human trafficking and other crimes,” the newspaper quoted him saying at a press conference after launching the East Coast shooting training programme yesterday.
Mustafa said these individuals should not blame the department and pretend to be surprised if their passports were blacklisted as they knew the reason.
“The department does not simply blacklist anyone’s passports as it wishes,” Mustafa was reported as saying.
Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua has filed a challenge against Mustafa after he was stopped from leaving the country on July 22.
Mustafa had also refused to reply to queries by Pua’s lawyer why he was banned from travelling overseas.
It is shameful for Malaysia when senior officials make pronouncements, which show how they lack total understanding of due process and the law and the requrements of their own position.
What country is it where a ban is slapped against someone on subjective and trumped up charges the rest of the world is left to ask?
Tony’s offence of course is to be an elected member of an opposition party who has successfully held corruption to account. Many Malaysians are rightly proud of that and proud of his many personal achievements.
By contrast, most Malaysians, as opinion polls are demonstrating, are hanging their heads in shame over the antics of the present Prime Minister, who will plainly stop at nothing to avoid accounting for billions which have disappeared from the economy and then appeared in his private bank accounts.
So, on the count of bringing shame on the country, ought not Najib be at the top of that blacklist?