COMMENT | For three weeks beginning at the end of September last year, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail was a busy man trying to fend off findings by the International Federation of Association Football (Fifa) that falsification and forgery of documents were used to grant citizenship to seven foreign footballers.

On Sept 27, a day after the Fifa announcement, he declared in a video on Facebook that the players received their citizenship after a thorough vetting process saying: “In this case, we complied with everything (citizenship laws).

“When the decision was made, we followed due...