Malaysia’s Mahathir Attacks Another Successor

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Oct 29, 2013

(Asia Sentinel) – Former Premier accuses Najib’s allies of buying votes in October intraparty polls

Former Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad today appears to have fired the first volley of a widely anticipated attack on Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, saying the premier’s allies in recent United Malays National Organization intraparty polls preserved their positions in the UMNO hierarchy by buying votes.

“We are told that they’ve eliminated corruption during the recent UMNO election, I am not convinced,” Mahathir told a conference at the country’s administrative capital of Putra Jaya. Although he didn’t mention Najib by name, he said: “I think there was a lot of money involved, going into the millions, and loads of people who should not be getting votes were getting votes because of the money they spent.”

It’s uncertain how much clout the 88-year-old former prime minister still has within the party. He ruled as prime minister for 22 years until handing the position on to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as his anointed successor in 2003. However, the implications are that the party, Malaysia’s biggest, may face a period of instability as the factions slug it out.

The next showdown, if there is one, could occur when UMNO holds its annual general assembly on Dec. 2-7 although a source in the Mahathir wing of the party said: “It could be, but there isn’t going to be a big bang. Gradual fireworks.”

A recent poll named Mahathir the most popular figure in UMNO, with a 75 percent approval rating, although that didn’t translate into votes for his allies in the UMNO intraparty elections.

Najib emerged from the May 5 national elections appearing badly weakened after the Barisan Nasional lost the popular vote for the first time since 1969 although it preserved a diminished parliamentary majority thanks to gerrymandering. Mahathir and Daim Zainuddin, the former finance minister, blamed Najib for reaching out too much to the country’s Chinese and Indian minorities at the cost of votes from UMNO’s ethnic Malay base.

After the election, Mahathir damned Najib with faint praise in a speech in Tokyo, saying the prime minister would stay in office because there wasn’t anybody at the time to replace him. Bloggers aligned with Mahathir have been staging attacks on the prime minister since the May polls, with one describing him as a “bug on the windshield.”

But Najib, a wily strategist, appears to have made common cause with forces aligned with former PM Badawi, whom Mahathir drove from office in 2008, in an effort to protect his flanks from Mahathir’s attacks. In particular, Najib has enlisted Badawi’s son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, who was previously reviled within the party. After Khairy was named Youth and Sports Minister, he became head of the youth wing of the party.

Also returned to power was Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, who was appointed head of the women’s wing of the party by Badawi. Shahrizat was forced to step down last year as a senator amid allegations that members of her family had looted the National Feedlot Corporation, a publicly funded project to rear cattle by halal, or Islamic religious methods.

Nonetheless, if Mahathir’s vendetta against Badawi is any indication, he can do considerable damage. Mahathir blamed Badawi for leading the ruling coalition into the loss of its two-thirds majority in Parliament for the first time since 1957. A months-long intraparty feud ensued before Badawi was driven from office and replaced with Najib.