Mahathir’s first failure was 1969
So we had the first Umno breakup in 1988. The second Umno breakup in 1998. And we may soon see the third Umno breakup later this year when Dr Mahathir forms his Umno Baru Lagi Baru, which he hopes will be able to grab power in the next general election in 2018.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said that his first failure was Tun Musa Hitam. If Dr Mahathir acknowledges that there is a first that means there must be others after that. I mean if you have WWI then you have WWII. If you have the First French Revolution then you have the Second French Revolution. That is why we had Elizabeth I — because we now have Elizabeth II. But we do not have Tunku Abdul Rahman I because there is no Tunku Abdul Rahman II. And in that same spirit we have Sodomy I — because we have Sodomy II.
Anyway, Musa was not Dr Mahathir’s first failure. His first failure was in 1969. Dr Mahathir made the mistake of telling the Chinese that he did not need their votes and that he could win the general election with just the Malay votes.
Well, the Chinese decided to punish him for that, as Dr Mahathir is so fond of telling us that story. So the Chinese voted for Yusof Rawa of PAS, as did the Malay voters. So Yusof Rawa won and Dr Mahathir lost. And that was Dr Mahathir’s first failure, underestimating the Chinese and thinking that he does not need the Chinese but only need the Malays.
And because he was so angry with the Chinese, Dr Mahathir started attacking the Chinese and accused them of stealing the wealth of the country. He also attacked Tunku Abdul Rahman and called him a Chinese lover. Dr Mahathir accused the Tunku of giving in to the Chinese, who had become too arrogant because of that.
And that was Dr Mahathir’s second failure. He laid the foundation for race riots in what would later become known thereon as May 13. And thousands died because of this second failure of Dr Mahathir.
Dr Mahathir has either forgotten or he thinks we have forgotten.
In 1981, when he took over as Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir refused to appoint Musa Hitam as his Deputy Prime Minister. Instead, he let Musa and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah fight it out for the post of Umno Deputy President. Then, whoever wins, he will become the Deputy Prime Minister.
And that caused a very serious split in Umno that tore the party into two. And that was Dr Mahathir’s third failure. So you see, even before Musa became the Deputy Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir already had three failures. And as they say, three strikes and you are out! But Dr Mahathir chalked up 20 or 30 failures and he still refused to leave the field.
Dr Mahathir now talks as if he chose Musa as his deputy. That is not true one bit. He threw Musa and Tengku Razaleigh into the ring to fight it out like two fighting cocks. And he told Umno to choose who they want and the one that Umno chooses would be made the Deputy Prime Minister.
So Dr Mahathir played no part in choosing Musa as his Deputy. He told the party to choose which of the two they want and the party did so and chose Musa. And based on who the party chose, Dr Mahathir then went and made that person the Deputy Prime Minister.
And the reason Musa quarrelled with Dr Mahathir (as what Dr Mahathir said in the news item below) is not the way that Dr Mahathir explains it. It was because Dr Mahathir was playing Musa against Tengku Razaleigh so that they are both so busy fighting each other they would have no time to bother about him.
It was basically Dr Mahathir’s divide-and-rule strategy. He divided Musa and Tengku Razaleigh so that he could rule over them. And in the end that killed the party, which is what Dr Mahathir is still trying to do till today.
So we had the first Umno breakup in 1988. The second Umno breakup in 1998. And we may soon see the third Umno breakup later this year when Dr Mahathir forms his Umno Baru Lagi Baru, which he hopes will be able to grab power in the next general election in 2018.
And to finance this Umno Baru Lagi Baru, Dr Mahathir is raising RM3 billion through his many proxies, nominees, and cronies. Dr Mahathir now realises that he can never oust Najib and the only way he can take over would be to kill Umno by forming a new party to rival Umno.
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Dr Mahathir: My first failure was Musa Hitam
(The Star) – Former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has hit out at Tun Musa Hitam in a sarcasm-laced salvo on his blog.
Dr Mahathir said his “very good friend, colleague, former Umno deputy president and deputy prime minister” blamed him for failing to achieve Vision 2020 due to a failure to groom successors.
“My first failure was Tun Musa Hitam himself. He could not wait for me to retire. So he resigned after five years being with me as my deputy, in a government his boys called the MM (Mahathir-Musa) government.
“He believed the Umno supreme council would throw me out and appoint him as president. The council decided to persuade him to return as DPM and deputy president. He came back as deputy president,” Dr Mahathir said via chedet.cc on Thursday.
According to Dr Mahathir, Musa persuaded Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah – an “erstwhile rival and enemy” of Musa’s – to contest for presidency against him.
He said this was because Musa was prepared to be Umno deputy president and deputy prime minister under Tengku Razaleigh, despite the former premier overlooking his “bad faith”, and later appointing him as special envoy to the United Nations with ministerial rank.
“In the contest for presidency, Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar, Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Tan Sri Rais Yatim sided with Tengku Razaleigh.
“I and Ghafar Baba won. Then I appointed all those who were not loyal to me as ministers in my cabinet. One of them, Tun Abdullah, eventually was named my successor as Prime Minister. Far from choosing only loyalists, I chose those disloyal to me,” said Dr Mahathir.
According to Dr Mahathir, he believed in leadership by example, and did not train anyone so they can make a success of Vision 2020.
“I must have set a bad example because those who succeeded me all failed to make a success of Vision 2020. I am to blame of course.
“Dear Musa, thank you very much for pinpointing the cause of the failure of Vision 2020. You must have known this in 1986, long before the Vision.
“It must have been your foresight which caused you to resign from the government I headed. So no one can blame you. Your service to me and the nation will go down in history,” Dr Mahathir concluded.
