Mahathir’s vendetta: the Joker in the pack (part 2)

“A new bridge would be an important symbol for future bilateral relations, that we’re no longer trapped by the whole notion of having to have that Causeway — we can demolish it and build something,” said Khairy in a report carried by the Rakyat Post.

Raggie Jessy

3.     Khairy’s dominion of influence

In part 1 (READ HERE) I began by telling you how someone had asked Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad why nobody from UMNO’s supreme council dared to fly in the teeth of Khairy Jamaluddin.

Now, just leave it to Mahathir to whip up a witty riposte. He’s one doctor with prescription doses that would yank the monkey in you right out of you, whoever you may be. And from where I stand, that’s precisely the kind of dose Mahathir had been delivering to Abdullah throughout the latter’s tenure as Prime Minister. Be that as it may, he had the floor rolling in the aisles over his ‘green Kajang boy’ retort, an overt allusion to none other than Khairy Jamaluddin.

There were those who reckoned Khairy to have been a victim of circumstance solely due to his kinship with Abdullah. However, speculation was rife of his condescending and egotistical ways, while many a commoner seemed to buy into online editorials that spoke of how Khairy called the shots from ‘the fourth floor’.

And then, there were whispers of his meddle with the affairs of ministries. But according to Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), Khairy’s dominion of influence wasn’t simply confined to ministries.

Taking the wraps off a possible breach of security and convention, RPK narrated how Abdullah had insisted on Khairy’s presence at meetings that were traditionally restricted to the Prime Minister and the Director of the Special Branch. As RPK put it, the meetings would not start until Khairy arrived.

By convention, these meetings would be held in the Prime Minister’s office. But according to RPK, they were shifted to the house to ward off unnecessary attention over Khairy’s presence at the Prime Minister’s office. Going by these allegations, one would be inclined to believe that Khairy had indeed stuck his oars in matters of national security.

Undoubtedly, the odds of this being true are subject to the legitimacy of RPK’s claim. That said, RPK told me how Khairy had ordered for his detention under the now defunct Internal Security Act (ISA). The disclosure seems to imply Khairy’s hand in the affairs of the Home Ministry as well, then helmed by Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Syed Hamid Albar.

4.     Of Khairy and the crooked bridge saga

During his recent interviews with mainstream and social media, Mahathir pointed fingers at Najib for reneging on a bargain he claims they had struck. According to the apparent terms of this agreement, Najib would work towards the erection of a crooked bridge to replace the ‘Malaysian half’ of the Johor-Singapore causeway. This seems to suggest a package deal of sorts that guaranteed his support for Najib’s ascendency to Premiership.

To recapitulate, a series of negotiations between Malaysia and Singapore over a proposition to replace the Johor causeway with a straight bridge went to pot months before Abdullah was slated to take over the reins of government from Mahathir. It was sometime before his retirement in 2003 that Mahathir evoked the idea of a crooked bridge to replace Malaysia’s half of the causeway.

When Abdullah took office, his Singaporean counterpart saw fit to reconsider the initial bridge proposal as a trade-off for resolutions on various bilateral issues, among which was  the granting of airspace by the Malaysian government for Royal Singapore Air Force (RSAF) planes to access. But Abdullah was caught off-guard when several Johor UMNO politicians erupted in frenzy, preferring that they be consulted over the matter.

Notwithstanding the hiccup, both governments pressed on for resolutions to issues that had been tabled, central to which were negotiations on the proposed bridge. Discussions seemed to be running along a good pace when team Abdullah suddenly struck the island republic with a bolt from the blue.

That’s right, team Abdullah did a Rothman’s International 180^o turn on the 26th of January 2006, when a proposition to erect a variant of the crooked bridge cropped up in an editorial published by the New Straits Times. The ‘scenic bridge’, as it was called, was to me as good as Mahathir’s crooked bridge garbed with a pretty dress and all the rest that comes with it.

As the story goes, the ‘scenic’ crooked bridge was to replace the ‘Malaysian half’ of the Johor causeway. The abrupt emergence of such a proposition puzzled the Singaporean government, given that discussions on the straight bridge were well under way.

Then, on the 3rd of February 2006, Syed Hamid explained to the island republic that Malaysia would sustain discussions on the straight bridge proposition, stressing that the decision to build a ‘scenic bridge’ was at Malaysia’s discretion. As Syed Hamid put it, negotiations with Singapore over the ‘scenic bridge’ were not warranted, given that Malaysia “had every right to do anything within its territory.”

There is really that much more to the crooked bridge saga, and I could go on and on with it. But it would not serve to the design of this article. As such, it would be best that I dwell on it in another article at another time, if at all.

Suffice to say, discussions on the bridge came to an abrupt halt when Abdullah’s administration made public its decision to axe the bridge project over concerns of sand supply to the island republic and the use of Malaysian airspace by RSAF. Mahathir’s displeasure over this sudden turnaround became manifest when he criticised Abdullah’s administration for showcasing to Singapore that Malaysia was a “country with no guts.”

Now, I find it interesting that Khairy seems to be breathing new life into a proposition that Abdullah had once put an end to. It is that much more interesting when one considers what Khairy had to say in Singapore just two days back, on the 24th of April 2015.

“A new bridge would be an important symbol for future bilateral relations, that we’re no longer trapped by the whole notion of having to have that Causeway — we can demolish it and build something,” said Khairy in a report carried by the Rakyat Post. These comments were given at a media interview in Singapore prior to a talk on the need for the island republic to balance relations with Malaysia.

In my discussions with RPK, I was told how Mahathir had wanted Khairy out of the picture altogether. According to RPK, it was Khairy’s rumoured recruitment by Singapore’s Security and Intelligence division (SID) through Kalimullah that triggered Mahathir’s aversion to him. It seems to be the reason why Mahathir did not spare Kalimullah in his assaults on Khairy and Abdullah.

Did Singapore wield authority over Abdullah through Khairy? Was it really Singapore that surreptitiously pulled the plug on the bridge proposal through Khairy?

RPK says Mahathir seems to think so. According to him, Mahathir got so pissed upon learning of all this that he decided there are no two ways about it that Pak Lah needs to go.

To be continued…