Party blue bloods, wife keeping Malaysian PM Najib Razak safe
Rowan Callick, The Australian
The battle is intensifying for the survival of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who this week was supported by thousands of racially inspired and religiously driven red-shirted ethnic Muslim Malays rallying in Kuala Lumpur.
The subtext was to proclaim unconditional support for Najib himself, the leader of the marchers’ ruling UMNO party.
James Chin, director of the Asia Institute at Tasmania University, told The Weekend Australian from Kuala Lumpur yesterday Najib would survive as long as he retained the backing of two of the three power blocs within UMNO.
The first is the party “blue-bloods”, including former leaders such as Mahathir Mohamad, who is now determined to unseat Najib, although he himself has very blue UMNO blood, as the son of the second prime minister and the nephew of the third.
The second bloc comprises senior organisational leaders, the divisional chiefs and the supreme council members — about 200 in all. “Like ALP factional bosses,” said Chin.
The third is the group of tycoons on the receiving end of government contracts, who are in some trouble because they ship large sums overseas whose value has slumped with the fall of the ringgit, down 20 per cent this year.
Chin says the first group is split over Najib but “mostly prefers him to any potential successor, who might become a loose cannon upsetting their own arrangements”, while the second continues to back him, but the third holds the most threat.
“These businessmen can be very dangerous for him,” said Chin, because of their financial capacity to influence UMNO members, “to rally them against Najib”.
The lack of an obvious successor is a strong card in Najib’s hand, Chin said.
Several weeks ago he sacked Muhyiddin Yassin as his deputy after he criticised the handling of allegations of abuse of public funds — warning the government would lose an election over the money missing from government investment bank 1MDB, which is $15 billion in debt.
In a defensive reshuffle, Najib brought in seven new ministers, with Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, considered a loyalist who offered little threat, as his new deputy.
But another analyst in Kuala Lumpur said this could prove “a risky appointment”, as Zahid grows in confidence, increasingly using the “I” in his speeches.
Najib said this week that people sometimes accused him of paying people to support him, which he vigorously denied. But, he said, he does sometimes help people when they are in trouble.
Such “help”, said the KL analyst, “can be a very big ingredient in support”.
This analyst said he had recently met Mahathir, who despite turning 90 remains alert and incisive, thus a key threat to Najib.
Mahathir earlier this month participated in a massive rally by the Bersih anti-corruption campaign — which Culture Minister Seri Nazri Aziz dismissed, charging the former prime minister of 22 years with defamation with the patronising comment: “What is left of his life, we should let him have some fun.”
Chin said one of the factors enabling Najib to cling to power while his predecessor Abdullah Badawi had been forced out by critics led by Mahathir, was the single-mindedness of his wife Rosmah Mansor, who had “acquired considerable influence” as a gatekeeper and briefer.
He said the inherited British legal system required the public prosecutor to initiate charges. And Najib’s new Attorney-General, Mohamed Apandi Ali, appeared reluctant to press any investigation that could embarrass the Prime Minister.
Najib has disrupted the official opposition, especially through taking a more robustly Muslim stance that threatens to pull votes from the Islamic PAS — to compensate for his loss of most middle-class support. He is unlikely to be ousted by a no-confidence vote in parliament, which next meets in the middle of next month, because, said Chin, the Speaker — a Najib supporter — would have to accept it in advance.
Ultimately, said Chin, “it is more likely that Najib will be undone by one of the international investigations” in Switzerland, Hong Kong and Britain into 1MDB and into $800 million that found its way into Najib’s bank account.
“The Malaysian establishment wouldn’t cope with charges being laid overseas, if this is the result,” he said.
This escalating political drama, said Singapore-based business analysts IMA Asia, is meanwhile “diverting the government from policy making, delaying local business deals, and discouraging foreign investors”.
