Dr Mahathir may have met his Waterloo

By MT Webmaster Last updated Nov 24, 2015

And they were slaughtered good and proper yesterday when they were led to believe that if they voted against the budget then another 30 Members of Parliament from Barisan Nasional will join them and Najib would not see Christmas as Prime Minister.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I have a friend in London who placed bets all over the place that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak would be out of office by September this year, which was two months ago. I asked him why he was so sure that that would happen and he replied that it was going to happen because it was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who was leading the charge so there was no way Najib could survive.

“Okay let me get this straight,” I told him, “Najib is going to get kicked out because it is Dr Mahathir who wants him out and anyone who Dr Mahathir wants kicked out will get kicked out.”

He confirmed that that was what be believes and hence he has placed bets with a few people that Najib is going to be out by September. I then told him that I, too, would take his bet for £100 and my bet was that Najib would still be Prime Minister right up to Christmas and beyond.

I met my friend again last week and asked him whether he wants to place another bet, double or nothing, that Najib will be celebrating Christmas and New Year still as Prime Minister, and his wife butted in and said, “Enough! He has already lost so much money.”

Basically, what my friend and most people believe is that no one in almost 50 years has ever survived a fight with Dr Mahathir. If Dr Mahathir wants you dead then consider yourself dead. And there is no reason why Najib should be any different. Dr Mahathir wants him out so consider him out. There are no two ways about it.

Well, yesterday Dr Mahathir may have finally met his Waterloo. Dr Mahathir campaigned far and wide for Najib to be ousted through a vote of no confidence in Parliament and that vote of no confidence was going to be done by voting against Budget 2016.

For that to succeed Dr Mahathir would need all 88 Members of Parliament from the opposition plus another 24 from Barisan Nasional to vote against the budget. And if the 14 PAS Members of Parliament do not join the anti-Budget 2016 group then they would need 38 Members of Parliament from Barisan Nasional to get that magic figure of 112.

Dr Mahathir was confident that he had the numbers — and not just 112, probably 120 or more. But what he got instead was just 74 with 128 voting in support of the budget and another 20 ‘abstaining’ (or 19 abstaining since Lim Kit Siang could not vote because he has been suspended from Parliament for six months).

So far we have not heard a word from Dr Mahathir. He is probably still recovering from shellshock and is licking his wounds. He was so sure he had a hold on Umno and Barisan Nasional plus that the entire opposition was behind him so there was no way he could fail. But fail he did and many people lost money on betting that he would succeed.

In more than 50 years Dr Mahathir has never failed. Well maybe in his economic policies he did fail when many of his creations spectacularly crashed and burned (and some are still crashing and burning). But when it comes to politics he always wins in the end and no one can survive a Dr Mahathir onslaught.

Najib, however, has survived onslaught after onslaught and yesterday’s final putsch that was supposed to drum him out of Putrajaya was an epic disaster for Dr Mahathir that is going to be forever remembered and will be a case study for students of political science for generations to come. I suspect you will be able to write your entire thesis and obtain your PhD just on this one episode alone.

So the message is crystal clear. Dr Mahathir no longer has a hold on Umno and Barisan Nasional like he believed he still has. Even those dissidents in Umno who appeared to be with him did not walk the talk yesterday. They abandoned Dr Mahathir to be slaughtered all alone while they twiddled their thumbs.

It does appear, however, that Dr Mahathir has emerged as the new opposition leader. Other than 11 out of 14 PAS Members of Parliament (and the independents), the entire opposition did what Dr Mahathir wanted them to do. They voted against the budget.

And why did they do that?

The 74 opposition Members of Parliament did not vote against the budget because they thought that the budget was bad. Even PAS and the independent Members of Parliament said that the budget is not all bad. It just needs some fine-tuning. But that is not reason enough to vote against the budget.

The 74 opposition Members of Parliament voted against the budget because this is what Dr Mahathir wanted them to do. Hence this vote is not about the country or the rakyat. It is about supporting Dr Mahathir. Dr Mahathir led them to believe that by voting against the budget they would be able to oust the Prime Minister.

The opposition will now have to explain to the rakyat why they voted against the budget. And they would be hard-pressed to do that because there is no valid reason other than because Dr Mahathir asked them to. So who do the opposition Members of Parliament work for, the rakyat or Dr Mahathir?

Dr Mahathir led the opposition Members of Parliament by the nose like cows being led to the slaughterhouse. And they allowed themselves to be led to the slaughterhouse and were slaughtered yesterday together with their cowherd, Dr Mahathir. So what does this make the opposition Members of Parliament, lembu Dr Mahathir?

Was it not Dr Mahathir who said that Malaysians have a herd mentality? And Dr Mahathir proved it yesterday by turning the opposition Members of Parliament into his herd of cows with him as their cowherd. And cowherds have only one objective at the end of the day, to slaughter his cows when the time is ripe.

This is the problem with the opposition. They lack direction and do not have a real leader. The opposition has never been a potent force to be reckoned with.

In 1990 it appeared like the fortunes of the opposition was going to change when Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, a then ex-Umno leader, led them. They formed three coalitions (one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and another in Sabah) to take on Umno and Barisan Nasional but did not really go far other than just take Kelantan.

In 1999, the opposition tied themselves to yet another ex-Umno leader, Anwar Ibrahim, but still could not oust Umno and Barisan Nasional. And now with Anwar in jail they cling to yet another Umno ex-leader, Dr Mahathir. For the last 25 years the opposition has always depended on ex-Umno leaders to lead them. Maybe Muhyiddin Yassin can offer his services as the new opposition leader to replace Dr Mahathir, Anwar and Tengku Razaleigh.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK