KUALA LUMPUR, March 2 — DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang admitted today that his party’s national publicity secretary Tony Pua had gone overboard on his criticism of the Foon Yew High School’s board of governors when they welcomed convicted former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak in Johor recently.

But the Iskandar Puteri MP said that Pua’s main message deserves a fair hearing.

"The DAP MP Damansara Tony Pua has gone too far in attacking the Foon Yew school board of governors but he was right in condemning Najib Razak in using Foon Yew to exculpate his kleptocracy,” Lim said in a statement.

He said the main thing was to remember that schools play a crucial role in guiding the nation’s next generations.

"Schools should not be diverted from its primary task to make future generations able to differentiate between right and wrong and never to lose the moral compass in life,” he said.

Lim said the Johor school’s board of governors should not be blamed for Najib’s visit to the school campus in Seri Alam and Kulai, which the latter had approved previously.

The Opposition lawmaker said the blame falls squarely on Najib instead, accusing the Umno politician of misusing the visit target the ethnic Chinese community for his personal agenda while campaigning for the Barisan Nasional in the March 12 Johor election.

He pointed out that Najib has been convicted in court of multiple criminal and financial wrongdoing in connection with SRC International Sdn Bhd, a former unit of sovereign investment firm 1MDB.

Pua and Najib have had a barbed exchange through the open press over the past two days.

Two days ago, Pua chided the Foon Yew school board for allowing Najib to speak at its campus, saying it showed "something really screwed up in the society”.

Najib replied yesterday, telling Pua to engage him directly and not go after the school board. The Pekan MP also claimed Pua was resorting to political intimidation.

Pua later replied to Najib, stressing that he was only interested in protecting the moral fiber of schools to ensure educational institutions' reputations are not tarnished.

Foon Yew chairman Tay Chin Hein later told news portal Malaysiakini that it was Najib who reached out first and explained that the school welcomed the ex-PM as the latter had approved construction for its Kulai branch first branch in 1999, and then the Seri Alam branch in 2013.

Today, Johor Umno deputy chairman Nur Jazlan Mohamed told Malaysiakini that he was the one who arranged Najib’s visit to Foon Yew so that the latter could campaign for the BN candidate.

Najib is appealing to the Federal Court to overturn his conviction and sentence to 12 years in jail and RM210 million fine over one count of abuse of power, three counts of criminal breach of trust, and three counts of money laundering involving RM42 million of funds from SRC International.