Najib-Mahathir feud: Time to call a spade a spade

Umar Mukhtar

It is open declaration out there that Dr. Mahathir Mohamad wants Najib out. And he wants it so as to save UMNO. Otherwise, the opposition will defeat Barisan Nasional come PRU 14.  That came from the horse’s mouth. The reason being, according to Mahathir, Najib had commited too many acts that has angered the voters.

It follows that if you are an UMNO lover and you believe that, you would agree to removing Najib as Umno President and/or Malaysia’s Prime Minister in the near future. Presumably, to save UMNO from electoral defeat. However, from experience we know that elections have a way of showcasing other fears that make 1MDB look like yesterday’s papers.

To remove a Prime Minister in a Westminster-style of government, a vote no confidence will have to be passed by a majority of the Members of Parliament irrespective if they are in the government party or the opposition party.

FACT ONE

Najib enjoys the support of a majority the government MPs, at the very least. It does not look likely that the balance of the government MPs would want to vote their own party member out of the prime ministership, even on the assumption that some opposition MPs would vote against Najib in order to save UMNO!

Even if the opposition MPs stay neutral, and even if the anti-Najib MP’s win the vote and chase Najib out, who will be the new PM? There is wishful thinking that Tengku Razaleih might accept the nomination and the opposition MPs will vote to express their confidence in him as the new PM.

If you believe that possibility you believe pigs fly. With due respect, since when has UMNO MPs vote or act on the basis of what the Rakyat want? They only vote to win. Sometimes it did coincide with what their party members want. But their first priority is their own self-interest. Otherwise, Tengku Razaleigh would have been PM a long time ago.

No matter how much Tengku Razaleigh tried to win over UMNO delegates for the party elections, he failed for various reasons. And not all of the reasons to reject him were holistic. That’s UMNO for you. Every problem of national ramifications are UMNO’s problems to solve their way.

When Mahathir fumbled big-time in the unwise forex caper which cost RM58,000 million loss of public funds, there was not even a successful attempt at a vote of no confidence. It would have lost anyway because there was no way that the government MPs would have voted with the opposition, come hell or high water.

Now that Mahathir has admitted that the removal off Najib is to strengten UMNO, it is folly for the opposition MPs to vote with the BN MPs. So we can conclude that the Westminster way of solving the present problem is effectively not available. Especially if the proposed replacement is Deputy Prime Minister Mahyiddin Yassin. The opposition’s new darling?

FACT TWO

It looks like the only way to remove Najib apart from PRU14 is to remove him as President of UMNO before then. Fat hopes. Najib presently enjoys the solid backing of at least 160 of the 191 UMNO divisions. The balance may include neutrals. They will vote to postpone the 2016 party elections if need be, and any requisition of an EGM.

Mahathir, a true and true Machiavellian, is paralysed without power. No horse-trading, no sweetener, not even promises. He had even lost the vote to be a division delegate when he was agitating against Abdullah Badawi at his own division. Must have been a bitter defeat even if compared to his parliamentary elections loss in 1969.

CONCLUSION

So all Mahathir could do is agitate the population. Which he is trying to do now like when he was mobilising against Abdullah. His echoes, to a limited extent, is from the opposition ranks. A little bit from sincere Malays, and Perkasa-type racists which is latent in our political practice and people who are not thinkers able to get out his spell, like Anwar Ibrahim’s put-on charm. Cronies and mercenaries who had been a permanent feature of Mahathir’s power-broking have aged and shuffled the old-fashion way

As to why the opposition is getting aroused, dining beside their hated enemies in spite of being victims of Mahathirism for decades, is answered by naive young opposition leaders who sincerely believe that a government misdeed must be punished. They think that Mahathir is all that powerful to help them dispose of Najib, and Mahathir revealing how much of what they believe of UMNO’s past misdeeds are really true, and after all that are said and done, they will finish off a battle-weary Mahathir too. So they think they can ride a tiger. Ride the tiger by the tail and end up with hands smelling of tiger-crap.

Short of a people-power uprising or a Thaksin-type civil disturbances, Mahathir has no chance selling Mahathirism to the people. Not in today’s Malaysia. Suddenly, Mahathir is a champion of the Malays? His list of Malay-betrayals is endless. Sometimes it appeared like he has nothing but contempt for the agrarian-minded Malays who could not help push him up to compete with the likes of Lee Kuan Yew. The megalomaniac.

Maybe Najib is no angel. But he is in legitimate power. He has time to modify his governance. We wish. 1MDB could very well be a disaster. One wrong step, he too will be finished. But not at the hands of the chief hypocrite. It is not deserving – not of Najib but for a hypocrite to triumph. Mahathir would not have lasted one term after he snatched victory from Tengku Razaleigh, if he rules in today’s internet savvy Malaysia.

Instead of retiring safely in his mega hundreds-of-hectars ranch in Argentina, he chosed to mess around with us again, purportedly to save the Malays. What hog-wash, we are not born yesterday! Let the people who will inherit this country fight their battles their way. Keep your superiority-complex smirk out of sight. They don’t charm us. In fact it is a bit pukish.

Let the man who shaped this country into a kleptocracy disappear into the sunset. If he had stayed to offer us his head – take it. I had thought that we got rid of him and thus lost that chance. God operates in mysterious ways. This time, He will help us destroy Mahathir’s legacy that brought us backwards, not in materialistic terms, but as a maturing nation that had values that enriched us as a people.