Mahathir, the man behind the Chinese Tsunami (final part)
The Third Force
By the month of May in 2008, former premier Tun Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi, then considered the dean of never-never land, found himself in a state of suspense – between being granted the dignity of retiring in grace, and being swept out of office with the rest of the trash.
Subscribers on each end found themselves in a similar predicament. Most were reluctant to openly stand for or against Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, fearing a backlash in the event that the plan to topple Abdullah did not succeed.
But the back and forth between these groups was hurting UMNO, a party that had already been damaged by the Prime Minister’s controversy-saddled son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin. The indecision by the centre-left — a group the Prime Minister once appealed to, but were hazily supportive of his leadership — only tended to make things worse.
“Conspiracy theorists believe to this day that Khairy was the reason why Mahathir wanted Abdullah retired. But what they fail to realise is that Khairy was never the main reason, but the joker in the pack, which made him the scapegoat in launching an all out offensive against the Prime Minister”
Committed to breaking the pause, both Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Mahathir’s son, Dato’ Seri Mukhriz Mahathir, began to shift the opinion poll past the midpoint stasis by calling on Abdullah to resign. Resonating with their call were battle-scarred party veterans, who were a little more than jilted seeing that the Prime Minister’s son-in-law was more to the front and centre of things than they were.
But the Prime Minister had his loyalists, and they were on the defensive. Yet, the more they defended Khairy, the more of a stake they had in Abdullah’s political demise. Both Mahathir and his most trusted aide and henchman, lawyer Matthias Chang, were on a roll by then, picking Abdullah’s leadership apart and accusing him of surrendering to the dictates of his conspiracy-riddled son-in-law.
“Dato’ Seri Mukhriz Mahathir was a relatively silent player in the conspiracy to topple Najib. But back when Abdullah was Prime Minister, Mukhriz openly contested the former’s leadership in the court of public opinion and proved himself to be under the influence of his own father. Ironically, Mahathir had accused Abdullah of the same, but in reverse order – he accused Abdullah of being under the influence of his son in-law”
So, in a sense, Khairy was more the trump card – the joker in the pack – than he was the reason Mahathir wanted Abdullah retired. And Mahathir knew well ahead that party veterans would follow suit and cast the decisive vote against Abdullah on Khairy’s account. And they did.
But some insist it was really all about Khairy
That’s true. But there are also those who insist that werewolves exist.
Let us be clear on one thing – had there been no problems between Mahathir and his successor, Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak may have delivered his inaugural speech as Prime Minister three or four years later than he actually did.
But a tactical decision by Abdullah changed all that – it curtailed his career trajectory to such an extent, that by the time he left office, the good ol’ folks in his home base of Penang were trying to figure out how a man who had once led the ruling coalition to a landslide victory in 2004, could have been forced a withdrawal from the national scene.
But for seasoned politicians, it was a set piece – the blog entries, the road-shows, the attack on government policies – if Mahathir wanted you out, he’d get you out, even if it meant destroying UMNO and everything that it represented, like he did in 1988.
“Sometime late in 2014, both Mahathir and Tun Daim Zainuddin chaired a roundtable in London on the conspiracy to oust Najib. Back when Abdullah was Prime Minister, Mahathir did something of a nature – he organised a meeting with the blogging roundtable to discuss ways to turn the in-laws into the outlaws”
Back then, not only did he destroy UMNO, he refused to let many of Tengku Tan Sri Razaleigh Hamzah’s men into UMNO Baru, a party that had precipitated out of a constitutional crisis Mahathir himself had stirred.
So annoyed was Mahathir with Abdullah that he wouldn’t for a minute cease his frantic pounding on his successor, who he accused of leadership and administrative failures. Not, at least, until the 9th of October 2008, when Abdullah involuntarily brought forward a transition plan that had initially been scheduled for 2010.
Through an announcement that signalled his precipitous fall into oblivion, Abdullah outlined a six month plan instead, which just over two decades ago, may have earned him a three-day exposure in local dailies – tops.
But thanks to the explosive effects of the internet and satellite news networks – something that almost did not exist during Mahathir’s years in office – it blasted into worldwide coverage, sucking along social media conspiracy theorists and enthusiasts into the turbines of slander and libel which Mahathir himself had constructed.
And that leaves us with the question – if not Khairy, then what, or who was it that inspired Mahathir to pound on his successor with sledgehammer fists?
It was Vincent Tan. Read on…
The plan was ambitious, but the goal, simple – to hedge the party for possible electoral losses. Mahathir intended to bankroll the party’s war-chest by running its purse strings through the hands of Tun Daim Zainuddin, his emissary to the Ministry of Finance. Daim, in turn, was tasked with cutting the deals on Mahathir’s behalf. And that should be hardly surprising.
Since taking office, Mahathir brought forth a brand of elitism – corporate capitalism – that gradually dismantled the party’s traditional apparatus in favour of a new crop of cash laden candidates. The former elitists – nobles, courtiers and the wiser civil servants – lost their rights to make the calls during elections or nominations, as their roles were farmed out to powerful capitalists who began funding Mahathir’s choice candidates.
After having defanged UMNO, Mahathir realised that he needed an emergency exit that would grant him some form of authority in the event that the tables were turned against him. With that in mind and since 1985, both Mahathir and Daim entered into a convoluted yet elaborate series of negotiations, favours and share-swaps that, within a decade, ‘consigned’ the full scope of Sports Toto Berhad – a company that was incorporated by the government in 1969 – to Johor born business magnate Tan Sri Vincent Tan.
“Daim may well be the richest man in Malaysia if his wealth is properly declared. So powerful was he in UMNO, that he ran the Ministry of Finance and several of its attendant concerns on his own terms. While it is true that Mahathir turned him into a billionaire, the journey from riches to more riches left a dirty trail that Daim knew about. Which is why, Daim is to Mahathir what Rafizi is to Wan Azizah; a shadow of a bad conscience that can never be separated from its master.”
What began as a ‘rationalisation plan’ turned quickly into a bailout exercise, when it was discovered that Daim’s onetime business concern, Raleigh Berhad, was running on a ledger deficit and was on the verge of a bankruptcy.
Reeling from the 1987 UMNO and 1988 constitutional crises that shook his faith in the party’s traditional electoral apparatus – which was as yet present – Mahathir decided once and for all that it would make sense to have Raleigh roped into negotiations and to render Daim beholden to his whims.
You can read more about the ‘rationalisation’ mangle in part 1 of this series (link below), and in an article by Raja Petra Kamarudin that Malaysia Today carried on the 6th of January 2016 (http://www.malaysia-today.net/about-najib-selling-the -country-to-the-chinese/).
But there is more.
While both the Tuns stood tipping their glasses over the controversial bailout, Vincent had already had a taste of what they were drinking back in 1986, a year after his holding concern, B&B Enterprise, was awarded the right to acquire 70% of Sports Toto Berhad.
Back then, Ascot Sports Sdn Bhd, another of Vincent’s gaming interests, was awarded the rights to offer off-course wagers on English and Australian horse races. Around then, gaming industry executives began working their oracle, crunching annual estimates that ran into billions when trying to forecast the kind of bread Vincent would be gobbling.
This led to immense speculation and fury among oppositionists and certain party insiders who somehow got to know of the controversial bailout. They accused both Mahathir and the UMNO-led government of giving Vincent far too much leeway – to operate both Sports Toto and off-site betting – in far too little a time.
So it was a little more than a coincidence that Ascot decided to close its sports book just two years after the more-than-cryptic Raleigh-bailout. Well placed sources seem to think that a deal of sorts was reached between Mahathir and Vincent to put the sports deal into hibernation, until such a time that Mahathir was no longer the Prime Minister.
Vesting his faith in Vincent and several other millionaires who he helped turn into billionaires, Mahathir was positive that he’d be running the show post-retirement by means of a ‘presidential council,’ which would ‘advise’ his successors on things that needed to be done, the way he wanted them done.
Corroborating this hypothesis is the fact that in June 2003 and just before his retirement, Mahathir, through the Ministry of Finance which he then headed, quietly approved the rights for Ascot to re-open its sports book and run a nationwide betting operation under terms of a 20 year concession.
“Vincent gained control of Sports Toto Berhad under terms of a verbal covenant that was said to have committed the Johor born Chinese tycoon to a proxy scheme that bankrolled UMNO’s war-chest”
But after forking out RM23 million for the rights in September the same year, Vincent was dealt an excruciating blow when Abdullah, just eleven days short of the day he celebrated his first anniversary as Prime Minister, came out to say this:
“We haven’t given any license to Ascot, and no license will be given out,”
And that, contrary to popular belief, was the exact straw that broke the camel’s back. According to a Mahathir associate who had been in touch with him at the time, the former premier was already disappointed with Abdullah over his delaying tactics in appointing his deputy.
“Next was the release of Anwar. The rest followed,” he added. By denying Vincent the right to further his gaming ambitions, Mahathir began to carve in granite these four words – “Abdullah needs to go.”
The Chinese Tsunami
Eleven months before the 12th general elections, on the 8th of April 2007, Dato’ Seri Lim Keng Yeik resigned from his post as Gerakan president and passed the baton to his deputy, Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon. The transition marked the onset of a new adventure by Mahathir and his henchmen, who had by then decided to turn the Penang state electorate against the ruling coalition.
Somewhere around then, Mahathir got Matthias to deliberate with several MCA life-members plans to turn the Chinese against Barisan Nasional (BN). The idea – to trigger a mass exodus of Chinese from MCA and Gerakan – involved some of the biggest names in corporate Malaysia who began financing opposition based parties and in particular, the DAP.
“Several MCA lifelong members who were also heads of Chinese associations conspired with Mahathir and Matthias to turn the Malaysian Chinese electorate against BN”
To facilitate the plan, Mahathir is believed to have solicited the resignation of a troubled Chinese businessman from his SESDAQ-listed company early in 2007. Financed by a Mahathir associate – a head honcho in the gambling arena – the businessman was said to have been planted in party X, a Chinese chauvinist concern that was oppositionist, to ensure that the lines were drawn according to Mahathir’s whims.
These efforts culminated in an unholy alliance which, through its newspeak and bad press, regulated the narrative on the age-old Chinese-Malay dilemma that had been gripping the country since before independence. This was more or less underlined by Richard Teo, who set the ball rolling with an article that surfaced on the 1st of May, 2007.
The article – Singapore Malays better off than Chinese in Malaysia – was carried by Lim Kit Siang’s blog and was an apparent rebuttal to an opinion piece by a certain Baki Aminuddin. Baki’s article was moved by Malaysiakini and expressed just the opposite – that Singapore Malays were worse off than Chinese in Malaysia.
“The late Lee Kuan Yew was positively anti-UMNO and held a grudge against both the Tunku and Mahathir. Following Singapore’s departure from Malaysia, Kuan Yew instructed a young Kit Siang to return to Malaysia and wrest control of DAP from its founder and secretary general, Devan Nair. DAP immediately went on to champion a ‘Malaysian Malaysia’, which incidentally, was a slogan that had been coined by PAP during its federation days.”
Frantically defending a statement by the late Lee Kuan Yew, Teo argued that Baki was naive to deny that the BN government was “systematically marginalising the Chinese and non-Malays.” Racially charged statements like these gradually degenerated into cliché as they gained widespread coverage in opposition run media portals.
The Chinese were bought over in less than a year and began attacking the government, accusing UMNO of being discriminative and both MCA and Gerakan of being toothless. The sudden swing in support gave DAP candidates at every level of the ballot the momentum to effortlessly crush their competition during the 2008 general elections.
Following the debacle, Mahathir accused Abdullah of wagering the island state ballot on a misconception – that he commanded the support of the Chinese. A little over a month after the poll, Mahathir had this to say:
“For his own good, he should step down now, because then it’ll be very smooth. But if he waits until the (UMNO) assembly, then you don’t know what people are going to say.”
And that more or less sums up the 2008 Chinese Tsunami conspiracy.
But why Najib?
Since June 2006, Mahathir had been mounting pressure on Abdullah to resign as Prime Minister. That pressure bore on the rungs and was felt by Najib, who Mahathir had assumed would seize the opportunity, being Abdullah’s deputy, to sweep his boss right out of office together with the trash.
When that didn’t happen, it became clear to Mahathir that Najib was a brand all by himself – a reformist, much like his late father. Right around then, a few reporters were fed clues by certain privileged party insiders, who told them that both Mahathir and Najib had a serious misunderstanding and weren’t on the best of terms. That is, however, something I am not at liberty to discuss here.
“Mahathir has conceded defeat in his quest to topple Najib. While one may be led to believe that the recent spate of attacks by Wall Street Journal are being directed at Najib, they really are an extension to the war of perception against the government that Mahathir had launched in London. These attacks – directed at the electorate by a slingshot – have been designed to turn Malaysians against BN before the 14th general elections”
Notwithstanding the fallout, these reporters took the cue and were the first on the scene the minute Abdullah announced his retirement plans. Anxious to cadge a sentence or two from Mahathir, they cornered him the first chance they got and asked him the million dollar question – would he endorse Najib?
Mahathir’s response shocked both regional investors and world leaders who had anticipated an end to the Malaysian political crisis. What Mahathir said amounted to this – Najib lacked the courage to do what was needed, when it was most needed. The insinuation was an apparent reference to that fact that Najib refused be drawn into a plot to topple Abdullah by cunning and forced cause.
However, by January 2009, seeing that it was past the eleventh hour, Mahathir decided to wear a smile and endorsed Najib as Abdullah’s replacement. But sources close to him seem to think that the grand old man had his mind made up by then – to pressure Najib into retirement immediately after the 13th general elections.
Whatever little chance there may have been for reconciliation was quashed in the months that followed Najib’s inauguration. Not only did Najib give Mahathir the cold shoulder and ignored him for six months, he went on to defend, but not in explicit terms, the position Abdullah took regarding the Ascot controversy. In short, Najib denied Vincent the betting license the latter so badly desired.
And that is precisely why both Mahathir and Matthias joined hands with a certain other Tun, an MCA lifelong member, and went out of their way to make sure that the Chinese voters never returned to BN.
THE END
Mahathir, the man behind the Chinese Tsunami (part 1)
Mahathir, the man behind the Chinese Tsunami (part 2)
