The Khairuddin Abu Hassan story: how it all began
The Third Force
Mahathirists call it the inevitable end to a venal administration. Jibbyists (Najib loyalists) are referring to it as a conspiracy by the Confederates of the Fifth Column to subvert the government. Whatever it is, plan ‘Najib out, Tan Sri in’ is flat on its face and is no longer the torch that will burn the Reichstag.
No. That torch is now in the hands of Khairuddin Abu Hassan, a man who seems to be on a mission to destroy Najib and the government. And rest assured, Khairuddin may not be acting on his own.
Treading the warpath
Traditional party decorum lapsed into effrontery late last month when Dato’ Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan went for the jugular of the Prime Minister. Since then, the former Batu Kawan division vice-chairman has been sinking his teeth deeper and deeper into the party’s presidency, with as little scruple as he swooped down on Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim with 50 Dalil Kenapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM.
Khairuddin was sacked from his post late February 2015 for being a bankrupt, in accordance with section 9A(1)(d) of the Societies Act of 1966. The decision by UMNO’s supreme council stupefied the embattled politician, seen now prancing across international borders with bad tidings against Dato’ Seri Najib Razak.
A staunch Mahathirist, Khairuddin insinuated male fide incentives behind his dismissal despite having brought pressure to bear on the Prime Minister to resign. He almost made it sound as if the party depended on him to subsist, before taking pot shots at the party’s head office for denying him an opportunity to plead his cause.
And like a rebel treading the warpath, Khairuddin lodged several police reports against the Prime Minister and Jho Low in Hong Kong on the 30th of August 2015. The reports succeeded two others that were lodged against 1MDB and Petro Saudi International in London (the UK) and Lyon (France), with allegations that bordered on conspiracy and fraud.
Khairuddin fingered the Attorney General and officials from the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), who he claimed were complicit with Najib to whitewash wrongdoing in 1MDB. In an apparent measure of vendetta, the renegade politician spoke of “ghostly hands” that were jockeying investigations into 1MDB by remote control.
All in all, Khairuddin is believed to be mounting pressure on Najib by a slingshot from Mahathir’s harem. The whisper on Najib is dense with conspiracy as Khairuddin and Mahathir keep hard at work, implicating the Prime Minister under very felonious circumstances.
But the question many are asking is this; just who the hell is Dato’ Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan, and to what do we owe the displeasure of his violent and discourteous fits against the established order? More importantly, is Khairuddin a Confederate of the Fifth Column?
Suddenly Khairuddin
Support for UMNO was already on the wane back in the late eighties when Tun Dr. Mahathir worked his oracle to rinse the government off his detractors. Following an internal party strife in 1987, Mahathir ran rings around the judiciary before he destroyed UMNO and got the ‘nationalist’ party supplanted with a new affair. ‘UMNO Baru’, as it was called, refused entry to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and several of his apologists, who Mahathir saw as threats to his leadership.
The dust had barely settled on the crisis when Mahathir renamed the new party UMNO, on grounds that the word ‘Baru’ was surplus to requirements and made no sense. Notwithstanding, the crisis occasioned deep fissures within the party, forever tainting Malay politics with a culture of skulduggery and other like practices that were not cricket.
Soon after, pockets of Malay nationalists began setting their sights on PAS, an Islamist based affair that articulated a fairly straightforward approach to fundamentalism and nationalism. UMNO had become too much of an elitist affair for the average Malay, who felt that the party had sidetracked from its original struggles and was really an institution for corporatist ultras to reap benefits from.
The long and short of it is this; Mahathir was being branded an anti-Islamist, and desperately needed to arrest the dissipation of support into the hands of PAS.
Perchance, it was providence on the part of Mahathir that afforded him the leverage of Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, an Islamic fundamentalist who was well received by Malays of all walks. Feigning moderation, Anwar accused PAS members of swaying from tenets that were central to Islamic brotherhood, and further charged the party with betraying the Malays. Soon, UMNO fundamentalists were seen hitching their stars on Anwar, who they believed would succeed Mahathir as Prime Minister in time to come.
And it was such wishful thinking that got Anwar loyalists working like Trojans to restore the balance of power in time for the general elections. So in a queer sense of irony, Mahathir owed it in part to Anwar for returning the ruling coalition to a Garrison’s finish on the 25th of April 1995. The unprecedented victory quickly resurrected Mahathir as the indomitable dictator of the House of Cards.
But shit was about to hit the fan.
The abrupt resignation of Tan Sri Eric Chia from Perwaja Steel some months later opened up a Pandora’s Box and revealed a company in colossal arrears. By then, Anwar had developed an insatiable appetite for power and began to set his sights on premiership. Chia’s resignation as Managing Director was incentive enough for Anwar to stick his oars into the affairs of Perwaja, a centrepiece to Mahathir’s industrialization drive.
Anwar, whose Finance Ministry’s holding unit held an 81% stake in Perwaja, told the August House that Perwaja lost RM 376.5 million in the year that ended 31st March 1995. The amount compounded to a staggering RM 2.49 billion in losses since Perwaja was incepted, a figure that was almost three times the company’s paid up capital and reserves lumped together.
According to Anwar, the government would undertake to honour Perwaja’s commitments to its debtors and service them in full. Towards the end, Anwar commissioned Price Waterhouse and Company to perform a comprehensive audit of Perwaja’s finances and management.
Preliminary findings from the audit firm corroborated reports by Perwaja’s new management, which revealed a company that was insolvent. The report further alleged mismanagement on the part of Chia, who it claimed had entered into dubitable contracts with local and foreign establishments.
Anwar disclosed these findings to parliament mid-1996, where he was quoted as saying that “The practices and the way business was carried out by the Perwaja group are very disappointing, and it is no surprise that Perwaja is facing a financial crisis.”
Now, it didn’t please Mahathir one bit when Anwar chose to lay Perwaja bare in the August House with such attention to details. Sometime over the next few months, Mahathir was said to have summoned a team of investigators to probe into allegations of misconduct that were mounting against Anwar.
Reports that came in were said to be encyclopaedic and foretold of a coup de main that was being hatched by Anwar to dislodge Mahathir from office. But what bore on Mahathir’s conscience the most were allegations that implicated Anwar in sexual acts against the order of nature.
During the 1998 UMNO General Assembly, Anwar’s boys from the youth division were seen shooting arrows across Mahathir’s bow on charges of cronyism and nepotism. Anwar himself took to the podium and began picking holes in the government’s administration of contracts. He went on to question the mores of bailing out well-connected firms, particularly those that were said to be linked to Tun Daim Zainuddin and Mahathir’s son Mirzan.
What transpired thereafter jolted Anwarists beyond rehabilitation; copies of a book that bore out damning charges against Anwar were distributed to delegates prior to his address of the Youth and Women assemblies. Among those who were instrumental in distributing the books was none other than Khairuddin Abu Hassan, cousin to Anwar Ibrahim.
Khairuddin is believed to have conspired with Mahathir in a confederacy to seal Anwar’s fate in. While it remains suspect if his actions were by proxy, his contributions to 50 Dalil Kenapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM must never be taken for granted.
The question that we need to be asking is this; was Khairuddin ever rewarded for 50 Dalil Kenapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM? And assuming that he was, how does Datin Seri Wan Azizah, the wife of the person Khairuddin more or less destroyed, come into the picture?
As we go along, you will begin to understand just why I prefer to think of Wan Azizah as a headless chicken. But I’m tired of writing, so I’ll just pen off for the moment. Suffice to say, this is not where the Khairuddin story ends. Rather, this is where it all begins.
To be continued..
