Razak and Najib: The differences are very extreme

By admin-s Last updated Oct 13, 2014

After having worked with Tun Abdul Razak and associated with him closely since 1965, I was hoping that Najib, the son, would even do better than his late father.

Ahmad Mustapha Hassan, The Ant Daily

It is to my utter dismay. He is the very opposite of his father who was prime minister from 1970 to 1976.

The first thing that Tun Razak told me about his wife Toh Puan Rahah was that she was the wife of the prime minster but had no status in the government. Thus Toh Puan (Tun) Rahah just remained in the background. She was simply a good wife and mother. She was not to involve herself in government matters either locally or internationally.

But this is not so with Datuk Seri Najib’s wife, Rosmah. She is all over the place and looks like she is doing more work than her husband the prime minister. She receives media attention equal to that of the PM and occasionally is better covered than him.

This is a far cry from what Tun Razak was. He was the man charting the destiny of the nation and nobody else. The rest was supposed to assist him in realising the goals that had been set by him.

Rosmah has also been upgraded to being the first lady of the country – a status never before accorded to any wife of a PM before Najib. The status of the country’s Queen had been usurped by the PM’s wife. This unbelievable phenomenon would never have taken place during Tun Razak’s time. He would have been appalled to see such a situation.

Tun Razak travelled thousands of kilometers to the rural hinterland of the county to see what could be done to uplift the living standards of the rural population. Najib on the other hand is more interested in travelling overseas on the pretext of doing work. This had cost the country millions of dollars.

Being overseas most of the time had its deleterious effects. His ministers seemed to run riot on things that do not concern them or their ministries. They even delved into social and ethnic affairs. One minister labelled the non-Malays as being arrogant as if he had made a detailed study of it. He acted more to wreck the government’s goals as set out by Najib and that was to achieve the one Malaysia policy. This only means that his own ministers do not adhere to his agenda.