4th March 2016: the day Mahathir committed sepuku

The Third Force

Closet deliberations amongst opposition lawmakers broke into public view last Sunday following a sharply-worded speech by DAP’s Charles Santiago. The Member of Parliament (MP) for Kelang shot down a declaration by a group of 45 oppositionists (although they initially claimed it was 58) he claimed had rushed a document – the so called ‘Citizen’s Declaration’ – which misrepresented Malaysians in every sense of the word.

His rebuke came in the wake of a press conference that Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad had called just four days back, the 4th of March 2016, in which the former premier got all foxy and announced a citizen’s uprising against Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak.

“Last Thursday, Mahathir called a press conference to impress upon the public that the rakyat had just about had it with Najib. Ironically, those in attendance were largely from the opposition front, while Mahathir, himself an oppositionist, failed to cajole UMNO heavyweights and various other Muslim groups into attendance. Most notable was the absence of PAS and its president, Hadi Awang”

Opposition media closely covered the press conference and stopped short only of painting Mahathir as a saint. It was typical newspeak invoked for dramatic impact – the impression one got was that the former premier’s patience was running thin, and that the time had come for Mahathir to throw down the gauntlet.

It is like calling halftime 90 minutes into a football match – the driving impression was that Mahathir had been dilatory in coming around, but is now strategising for a serious assault in round two. But the truth of the matter is this – the war of perception that he had launched in December 2014 fizzled out just three months ago on the 10th of December 2015. All Mahathir has left now is an amazing draft of last Thursday’s resolution, which many say is as good as toiletpaper after a good ass-wipe.

The 2014-2015 conspiracy against Najib in a nutshell

Early in April last year, the former premier kicked off a three-month long campaign against Najib, who he claimed was racked by corruption scandals that were hurting the country and UMNO. But the campaign stretched well beyond the month of July and turned into a multi-million dollar lesson for Mahathir the minute a coup plot was uncovered.

The story goes that Najib, who got the word on the plot, saved his leadership from coming to nothing by sacking his then deputy, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, for failing to assist him in overseeing government. But that was the rehearsed and diplomatic version for public consumption.

The truth concerned a certain Tan Sri – Tengku Tan Sri Razaleigh Hamzah – who turned his back on Mahathir seeing that a new regime would have little role in it for him to play. Realising this, the Kelantan prince found his voice and immediately threw an echo of it, warning the Prime Minister of impending doom.

“Razaleigh made an 11th hour u-turn and decided to come clean on a plot to topple Najib. Seeing that chances of a Najib-ouster was ultra-slim, the ultra-Malay from Kelantan began to sing like a canary and entertained Najib with tales from the nether end of the crypt – Mahathir’s camp”

Thereafter, it became known to Najib that his deputy had conspired with the then Attorney General (AG), Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, to fabricate a charge sheet against him on counts of fraud and conspiracy. The episode brought some scandalous pieces to the table, which when fitted together, took the wraps off an insidious and sinister plot that was both treasonous and subversive against the Government of Malaysia.

It was learnt that the three-month campaign had been contrived to put the lid on the Prime Minister’s politics. According to a well-placed source, Najib was told that he would be arrested immediately after the 29th July sitting by the Cabinet Meeting. The Prime Minister pre-empted the arrest by getting both the AG and his deputy sacked without ever revealing to the public that the two had conspired to sabotage the government.

Both Gani and Muhyiddin were later said to have been complicit with Mahathir and former finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin in a confederacy – established within the prospective framework of a coalition government – to topple the Prime Minister and to effect regime change.

That plan was hatched late in 2014, when both Mahathir and Daim convinced four billionaire-capitalists to fork out RM 2 billion, some of which was used to bankroll a world media campaign against the economy and the ringgit. The group of saboteurs had cables running through several government agencies that channelled them confidential information which ended in the hands of foreign nationals. As of January 2016, that was all I knew.

But in the month after, it was revealed to me that the 2008 and 2013 Chinese Tsunamis were in fact the result of a complicity that had been negotiated between lawyer Matthias Chang and Tun Ling Liong Sik. The duo engaged with several MCA life-members who were heads of various Chinese associations in a mission to turn the Chinese against BN and in particular, the MCA.

Prior to that, Mahathir is believed to have solicited Tony Pua’s resignation as director of a SESDAQ-listed company in a quid pro quo arrangement to help the latter sort out some of his company’s problems. The failed businessman was then planted in DAP and is believed to have been funded by a Chinese tycoon – a Mahathir proxy – to help the party (DAP) launch a spite-filled campaign to discredit MCA and UMNO.

“Tony Pua is believed to be a Trojan horse, planted by Mahathir in DAP to advance the latter’s devious agendas from within the Chinese chauvinist party. The DAP MP is also said to be funded by a Chinese head honcho in the gambling arena – a Mahathir proxy”

The fact that the current MCA president cannot come out to establish his unequivocal support for Najib is proof that his party is being controlled by various triads and Chinese associations that not only fix party positions, but are out to sabotage BN come the next elections. A recent statement by Dato’ Seri Liow Tiong Lai was seen more as a thinly-coated concession in favour of the Prime Minister than it was a statement of support.

The long and short of it is this – while it is true that Mahathir had architected a grand scheme to oust Najib, all he secured was his son’s fall from grace and the sacking of Muhyiddin from his post as Deputy Prime Minister.

Worse, the odds of a Chinese return to BN in 2018 is next to nil, given that the present MCA leadership may be construed as complicit with Mahathir, one way or the other – knowingly or unknowingly – to make sure that the Chinese ballot remains stranded on DAP’s corner of the isle.

Mahathir did a Semangat 46 – and failed

The former premier took on an outsized risk last Thursday in pursuit of a regime change – the press conference that he had called for saw more glitz than it did glamour, with none of the UMNO heavyweights being anywhere in sight. Now an oppositionist, Mahathir failed to inspire a major-league tsunami within UMNO, the way Tengku Tan Sri Razaleigh Hamzah (a.k.a. Ku Li) did when he left the party in 1988.

Back then, a dissident movement gravitated towards Razaleigh, comprising party leaders who were irked by the fact that Mahathir was “flouting the laws of the tribe and acting un-Malay.” According to Mahathir – then the Prime Minister – he would remain in office even if he was toppled as party president. And that turned the traditional party elitists into very, very angry men.

The fracas began with the resignation of Mahathir’s deputy, Tun Musa Hitam, early in 1986. Mahathir replaced several senior members of his cabinet and filled Musa’s position with a lesser known figure, Tun Ghafar Baba. The move fractured the party apparatus and triggered a revolt against Mahathir, who was accused of concentrating his power and abandoning those that he thought were capable of ousting him.

During the 1987 party triennial elections, Razaleigh ran against Mahathir for presidency on the platform of restoring the party’s traditional aristocratic base. However, a wafer thin victory that leaned towards Mahathir precipitated into a court battle, which saw the former premier twisting the arms of judiciary in a conscious effort to prevent Razaleigh from ousting him.

Working through the backdoor, Mahathir got the court to dissolve UMNO in an effort to crush Razaleigh’s campaign by rendering him a party apostate. Following this, the former premier registered a new party, UMNO Baru, which denied all of Razaliegh’s supporters’ entry, effectively turning a chunk of the old UMNO into an opposition front.

“Mahathir ran rings around judiciary and got UMNO deregistered in 1988. The UMNO you see today is a party that is 28 years old – no thanks to Mahathir – and not 70, as many believe. Mahathir does not love UMNO, and never did. He views the party merely as a platform to advance his personal agendas, and is ever willing to destroy the party if it doesn’t serve to his whims”

The episode caused an uproar and weakened the Mahathir edifice. Seeing his former boss wounded, Razaleigh pursued to establish a Malay-based nationalist party – Semangat 46 – which he propped against the spirit of UMNO’s original struggles that predated to its inception in 1946. Once registered, the party consolidated enough gravity from UMNO, such that oppositionists were confident to lend him their hands in ripping BN apart come the 1990 general elections.

It almost seemed as if the potent half of UMNO’s roll had been torn and lent to Semangat, which had names that included former Supreme Council members, ministers and MP’s. PAS greeted Semangat with high hopes, albeit being apprehensive of the party’s nationalist commitments. PAS was not to blame, given that Semangat comprised a splinter faction that had been jettisoned off UMNO’s elitist latitudes.

Notwithstanding the reservations, both PAS and Semangat consolidated their energies under the banner of Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah (APU), which Malays began to identify as a fundamentalist and nationalist alternative that was well equipped to take UMNO by its horns.

But by 1995, the truth dawned upon Razaleigh – that ceramah turnouts were no indication of a party’s electoral strength. After spending close to RM100 million, Semangat 46 failed in its central thrust to destroy UMNO during the general elections, while BN scored an unprecedented four fifths majority in a ballot that, for the second time since 1990, saw new party heavyweights being pitted against former heavyweights in a general election.

Last Thursday, Mahathir attempted to prop his long-gone charismatic and authoritative persona against the spirit of Razaleigh’s 1988 Semangat struggle. Yet, he failed to get even PAS president Tuan Guru Dato’ Seri Abdul Haji Hadi Awang to attend, let alone the party’s administration or its ulama faction, which has long abandoned him on suspicion that he harboured an anti-Islamist bias. The only PAS member in attendance, Mustaffa Ali, came on his own accord, by his own admission.

While on stage, Mahathir took to the mike on two occasions – first, to explain why the Prime Minister had to be retired, and later, to tell us why it had to be done now. Claiming the government to have staggered from crisis to crisis, Mahathir turned his attention to UMNO and accused its president of harbouring a villainous agenda to turn the party into his fortress.

However, some of his newspeak seemed to emanate from the mouth of Bersih Chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah, who wailed the same old battle-cry – “Najib needs to go… Najib needs to go” – albeit in different tone and flavour.

But we’ve heard it all – the economy, the corruption, the abuse of power – if there is one thing Mahathir has yet to accuse Najib of doing, it is to rob the Pope of his bread and wine. And if there is one thing that history has failed to teach Mahathir – which Razaleigh had figured out in 1995 – is that once you’re no longer a member of the party that shot you to fame, you’re a washout.

The new axis of evil

The Thursday conference was a huge gaffe – apart from the absence of major-league players, Dato’ Seri Shafie Apdal was a no-show. Days earlier, Mahathir was said to have told Muhyiddin, who was then abroad, to either “resign from UMNO or be damned,” seeing that his own resignation had not inspired the mass exodus Razaleigh had incited in 1988.

But when not even his own son chose to resign, Mahathir suffered a shock and called on Lim Kit Siang and Azmin Ali. The duo was sold on the idea that a loose coalition of oppositionists could summon up a reformist agenda on neo-ideological platitudes and bring a sharp end to Najib’s administration.

But the biggest mistake that Mahathir made was to prop himself alongside the most unlikely of bedfellows – Kit Siang and Azmin. This assured Malaysians and in particular, Islamic scholars, that Mahathir had in fact gone bonkers.

What shocked many Muslims was the fact that the grand old man had agreed to share a stage with Kit Siang, the person he repeatedly accused for half a millennium of conspiring to water down Islam and Malay articles of culture.

The tried and true among Islamic scholars related to me in person, in the past two days, how Mahathir had choked his aqidah, to a point that shifted the scale of his personage from being implementer of what was required of Islam – dinar and dirham as currency – to being ‘a rebel Muslim’ who would sell his soul to have his son become Prime Minister by 2021.

The outfit – an axis of evil – comprised four bedfellows, the fourth being Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who Islamic scholars have long denounced for advancing theology they insist isn’t true-Islam. Worse, Mahathir attended to an audience that numbered far less than the time Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sacked from UMNO. Back then, a disgraced Anwar was able to draw a throng of party heavyweights and a rabble of supporters who were emotionally ambivalent with mob-like tendencies.

“Mahathir decided to share a bed with bloodthirsty politicians, some of whom he has spent a great many years denouncing. Muslim scholars dropped whatever ounce of credit they had left for Mahathir the minute Nurul Izzah Anwar came out to support his cause prior to the Thursday convergence”

All in all, Mahathir seems to have lost whatever little respect he had retained from the Muslim majority in Malaysia. If the Thursday gathering and the online traction it gained is anything to go by, rebel factions within UMNO and MCA may desperately be trying to figure out the best way to inveigle Najib into granting them an amnesty of sorts as we speak.