Is Hishammuddin Hussein, voice of Malaysia on flight MH370, headed for the top?
(SCMP) – When Malaysia Airlines flight 370 went missing, the country’s defence minister and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, may have recalled his own brush with death.
Just last year, a helicopter he and his family were travelling in toppled over onto its side after landing at a site in Kuala Lumpur.
Strong winds were blamed. No one was hurt, but the incident left the minister dazed.
The 52-year-old would surely have never imagined that almost a year later, he would be behind efforts to co-ordinate more than two dozen nations to crack the biggest mystery in modern aviation history.
Hishammuddin has also become the face of Malaysia to the international media.
When the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8, Prime Minister Najib Razak initially turned to civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, an unknown civil servant, to hold the fort.
But after a series of blunders, the former air traffic controller was promptly replaced by Hishammuddin as the man to handle the intense global scrutiny at the daily press conference.
It was no easy task. Information about the flight and its possible fate came at a snail’s pace and to make things worse, some of the statements were soon after retracted, leading to confusion and contradiction.
This fanned the flames of anger in Beijing – two-thirds of the passengers on the flight were Chinese nationals.
And all this took place under the relentless gaze of the modern 24-hour news operation and its incessant demand for information.
But as talking heads on television channels and angry relatives continued to attack the credibility of Hishammuddin and Malaysia over their jittery handling of the crisis, there could be a surprising twist in the tale.
Despite the controversies, the saga may unwittingly provide the extra impetus Hishammuddin needs to become the next prime minister of Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy.
“If all these relentless foreign [media] attacks persist, Malaysian people may indeed rally around him as a reaction,” said Oh Ei Sun, who was political secretary to Najib when he became prime minister in 2009.
“Domestically, it has actually enhanced his credentials as most locals perceive him as doing reasonably well under very tough circumstances.”
Local reporters covering Hishammuddin’s daily press conferences emphatically say there isn’t anyone else in the Malaysian cabinet who could do a better job of handling the crisis. One of them, who works for a popular newspaper, said: “If you have met any of our other ministers, you will know why. Najib is the only one that can maybe do equally well, but probably not better.”
And it’s not just the Malaysian media that holds this view. A taxi driver, who wanted to be known only as Tan, said: “The government here is no good and there is always a lot of corruption.
“But Hishammuddin is not corrupt and he isn’t embarrassing Malaysia on television. He is doing his best, I can see.”
Malaysians are also favourably comparing Hishammuddin’s handling of the MH370 crisis with his previous poor performance dealing with the country’s biggest security threat of recent times, when a group of armed Filipino rebels who claimed allegiance to its former rulers invaded Sabah last year claiming the Malaysian state belonged to them.
“He wasn’t good and there was much criticism from locals back then,” said Sivamurugan Pandian, of the School of Social Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
“Now he’s so much different and it’s true that most Malaysians feel he is doing a good job.”
