Malaysia’s Najib: Jump or be Pushed

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On May 9, 2013

Election aftermath could soon claim its real loser, the current PM

“We advised Najib against pandering to Chinese unreasonable requests. He bent over backwards to the Chinese where those resources could have gone to other rural or bumi constituencies. Now UMNO wants Najib to take responsibility.”

John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, having been instrumental in driving his successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi from power in 2009 after a poor electoral performance, now may be poised to try to do the same thing to the current prime minister, Najib Tun Razak.

It may depend on whether Najib jumps or is pushed, however. The premier is said to be disillusioned and discouraged and may leave the premiership at the United Malays National Organization annual general meeting in October, handing over power to the current vice president Muhyiddin Yassin, sources say – if he lasts that long. Najib led the Barisan Nasional to its lowest vote total since independence at 46.66 percent of the popular vote to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition’s 50.1 percent, taking a diminished 133 seats in the parliament to Pakatan Rakyat’s 89 – amid allegations of voter irregularities that put the Barisan over the top.

“I am told that Najib will hand over to Muhyiddin in October,” a lawyer with close contacts to UMNO said. “The change may finally come but voluntarily between Najib and Muhyiddin. We’ll have to let it play it out some more.”

That could foreshadow months of instability inside the UMNO leadership as a weakened Najib hangs on to power in the face of a wing of the party that wants to double down on the policies that have led to diminished returns in the last two elections. Toppling him now for Muhyiddin could well lead to costly party rifts, as it did in 2009 with the Badawi faction of the party. A change would probably signal that UMNO will steer to the conservative right, counterintuitive to what the electorate appears to have been saying. It was UMNO moderates such as Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahrir Samad who profited in the election while Malay nationalists Ibrahim Ali and Zulkifli Noordin were soundly defeated.

The Mahathir wing appears disdainful of Najib’s 1Malaysia strategy, which calls for an emphasis on ethnic harmony and national unity. If anything, the 87-year-old former prime minister, with his sponsorship of the Malay nationalist NGO Perkasa, appears to be reverting to his days as a Malay firebrand that got him kicked out of UMNO for several years before he was reinstated by Najib’s father, Tun Abdul Razak.

However, Mahathir, a source said, “campaigned hard for Najib and the Barisan Nasional. The Doc (Mahathir) let Najib do what he wanted pretty much. Najib led UMNO with his Economic Transformation Program, Government Transformation Program, etc. Now that the results weren’t good Najib has to take responsibility. Most importantly, I get the sense that Najib was completely devastated and doesn’t want the job anymore. Furthermore, Muhyiddin can fight fire with fire against DAP’s race campaign.”

It thus remains to be seen if Najib’s ETP and GTP programs, the cornerstone of his government policy, are at risk, emphasizing as they do competitive bidding instead of special privileges for ethnic Malays. Muhyiddin, although not as strident as other Malay nationalists, nonetheless is closer to Mahathir’s line of thinking than many are comfortable with.