Salleh’s take on Rosmah and what irks Dr M
The Sabah Speaker alleges that Najib’s failure to follow through with the Crooked Bridge and the double-tracking railway was Mahathir’s real grouse with Najib.
(Free Malaysia Today) – Sabah Speaker Salleh Said Keruak has accused Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the opposition of unfairly attacking Rosmah Mansor to get at her husband, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
In his latest blog posting, Salleh attempts to draw parallels between the current effort to force Najib’s resignation and the tactics used in 2006 against Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
He recalls that in Abdullah’s case, there were allegations that he allowed the country to be run by the so-called “4K Government”, the “K” referring to Kak Endon (Abdullah’s wife), Khairy Jamaluddin (his son-in-law), Kalimullah Hassan (a journalism veteran said to be his spin doctor) and Kamal (his son).
He says Mahathir “went all over the country” to campaign against Abdullah by “discrediting the 4K team”.
“Najib’s family and friends are now the targets of character assassination,” he adds.
In his defence of Rosmah against accusations that she has pretensions as to her own importance, Salleh says: “The Prime Minister’s wife is supposed to play a role in government. And this has been the practice since the time of Dr Mahathir when the Prime Minister’s wife began to be called ‘The First Lady’.
“That term was actually coined during Dr Mahathir’s tenure as Prime Minister. So this is not a trend started by the current Prime Minister.
“In the US, the First Lady is given an office and her own staff, including a security team. In Malaysia, of course, the role of First Lady is more informal and not institutionalised as in the US.”
Salleh also makes the startling allegation that Mahathir’s real grouse against Najib is not the latter’s alleged mismanagement of public funds, or his poor leadership or his suspected involvement in murder, but his failure to follow through with the former prime minister’s pet projects – the so-called “Crooked Bridge” and the double-tracking railway to Singapore.
“This is what irks Dr Mahathir,” he says.
