Mukhriz is bigger than Kedah

By MT Webmaster Last updated Jan 30, 2016

You need to make people hate the DAP Chinese, the Amanah Malays, Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng, Anwar Ibrahim, Mat Sabu, the opposition, etc. This is how the opposition does it and if Umno and Barisan Nasional want to remain in power then this is exactly the same game they need to play. If not, in 2018 Malaysia is going to get a new government.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I really do not blame Kedah Menteri Besar Mukhriz Mahathir for wanting to spend more time in Kuala Lumpur with his family and to run his business empire than waste his time in Kedah when his businesses are bigger than the whole state of Kedah.

The combined revenues and profits of only his known listed companies are greater than the revenues of Kedah. And we really do not know what other deals he has up his sleeve. In Malaysia what you see is not what you get. Politics is the politics of hidden hands while business is done though proxies and nominees.

That is what we would call the Malaysian way.

The latest Auditor-General report stated that in 2014 Kedah suffered a drop in revenues and registered its largest ever budget deficit since 2008. So that places Kedah alongside Penang, which saw its expenses triple since 2008 and which it had to finance through the sale of state land. (READ HERE)

Three of Mukhriz’s public companies registered total revenues of almost RM700 million with a pre-tax profit of RM41 million in their latest financial year while Kedah registered revenues of RM506 million and a deficit of RM71 million.

Anyway, the talk is that on Wednesday a new Kedah Menteri Besar is going to be sworn in. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has warned that if Mukhriz is removed then Kedah faces the danger of falling to the opposition.

I think what Dr Mahathir means is that the Umno members and supporters would protest by voting opposition if Mukhriz were no longer the Menteri Besar. That is the same thing they said when Khalid Ibrahim was removed as the Selangor Menteri Besar — which is the opposition members and supporters would protest by voting for Barisan Nasional.

But that still did not stop them from replacing Khalid with Azmin Ali so I do not see why that should stop them from replacing Mukhriz as well.

They also say that if they had replaced the PAS Menteri Besar of Kedah, Azizan Abdul Razak, then Kedah would not have fallen to Barisan Nasional in 2013. Do you really believe that? The Kedah voters would have voted Barisan even if Nik Aziz Nik Mat himself had taken over as the new Kedah Menteri Besar.

Dr Mahathir also says that if Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is not ousted and replaced, then Barisan Nasional is going to lose the next general election. So, to save Barisan Nasional, and hence Umno as well, Malaysia needs a new Prime Minister.

Actually that is what they also say about his son — in that if Mukhriz is not removed and replaced then Kedah is going to fall to the opposition in the next general election.

The truth is the majority of the Chinese would still vote opposition even if Najib is ousted and replaced. The only way (some of) the Chinese (not all of them) would vote Barisan Nasional would be if a non-Umno man takes over as the new Prime Minister. As long as Najib is replaced with yet another Umno Prime Minister then Barisan Nasional is not going to get the Chinese vote save for maybe 5% or so.

Of course, the strategy being employed by the opposition is to stir hatred against Najib. If they can make enough people hate Najib (and his wife Rosmah Mansor) then there is a strong possibility that the people might vote opposition just out of sheer hatred for Najib.

This is the same strategy being employed by the ANC (Anti-Najib Campaign). They are raising all sorts of issues, some fabricated and some insinuated, to make people hate Najib (and his wife). They are hoping that if the hate is strong enough and widespread enough then the people will take to the streets and burn and riot and demand Najib’s resignation.

The problem with the politics of hate, however, is that the knife cuts both ways. DAP is playing the hate Malays and Islam card. The ANC is playing the hate Najib and Rosmah card. The Malay nationalists are playing the hate DAP and Chinese card. The Islamists are playing the hate the Christians and the Church card.

So you see, at the end of the day, we fight fire with fire. We fight hate with hate. When you teach people to hate us, instead of fighting back by trying to make those people love us, we fight back by making people hate you as well.

Can you see how the hate game is played? This was exactly how we from the Reformasi Movement played this hate game in 1999. We instigated the people to hate Dr Mahathir (while telling them to not hate Umno but just hate Dr Mahathir). So we even got the Umno people to support us based on ‘we are united by our hate for Dr Mahathir’.

Dr Mahathir realised this and that was why in 2003 he handed power to Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi — which was a good move as the 2004 general election proved.

Then in 2007 we changed strategy and launched the hate Umno campaign called ABU (Asal Bukan Umno or Anything But Umno). This, too, worked — as the 2008 general election proved.

So, since 1998 right up to now, almost 20 years now, the opposition has been employing hate campaigns. And it has worked. And the only way that Umno and Barisan Nasional are going to win this game would be to also employ the same hate campaign strategy.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK