Najib should agree to Mahathir’s Popularity Contest Referendum

By MT Webmaster Last updated Mar 23, 2016

We are assuming, of course, that by September 2018 or September 2019 Najib is still the Umno President and is still Malaysia’s Prime Minister and that Mahathir is still alive. If not then it would not matter one bit what the Popularity Contest Referendum reveals.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak should agree to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Popularity Contest Referendum proposal. After all, there is no system of Referendum in Malaysia’s Federal Constitution so it would be a purely academic exercise and would not be legally binding.

The Popularity Contest Referendum is merely to test who is more popular — Najib or Mahathir. And if the Referendum proves that Najib is more popular, then Mahathir promises to shut his gap once and for all and never open his mouth again. That, alone, makes the Popularity Contest Referendum worthwhile because in the meantime Mahathir would have to stop talking and wait for the Referendum to be over.

What Mahathir wants to do is to test his strength against Najib’s by seeing who is more popular. His son, Mukhriz, is already campaigning in Kedah and yesterday he toured the kampungs to see how massive a crowd he can attract. You can see the photographs of the crowd in the photographs below. Mat Sabu would probably throw down the microphone if this happened to him.

Mahathir wants a foreign polling company to conduct this Popularity Contest Referendum. This is because he does not trust the Election Commission of Malaysia or SPR.

I do not blame Mahathir one bit. Back in 1999 there were allegations that the SPR helped Barisan Nasional cheat in the 30th November general election. It seems, according to Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition coalition, Barisan Alternatif, was supposed to have won that election but then Barisan Nasional cheated and won instead.

And, back in 1999, Mahathir was the Prime Minister and a very unpopular Prime Minister at that. Opinion polls at that time showed that Mahathir’s popularity had declined to just 30% so imagine everyone’s surprise when Barisan Nasional still won that election when they should have lost.

The Special Branch advised Mahathir that in the next general election in 2004 Barisan Nasional was going to get wiped out because the voters were really very angry. And the Special Branch told Mahathir that unless he resigns, Umno and Barisan Nasional are finished.

So, in mid-2002, Mahathir announced his resignation as Umno President and Prime Minister and 15 months later, on 1st November 2003, he handed power to his number two, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Four months later, Abdullah called for a general election and Umno and Barisan Nasional won the biggest victory ever in Malaysian election history.

So the Special Branch was correct. The problem was Mahathir. Get rid of Mahathir and Umno and Barisan Nasional are safe. In fact, they are not only safe, but they would be able to perform the best ever in Malaysian election history.

Mahathir knew he could not hold on to power for 32 years until 2013 like his Singapore nemesis, Lee Kuan Yew, who held the Prime Minister’s post for 31 years. Mahathir was forced to transfer power to Abdullah in 2003, ten years earlier than planned. But then he needed those ten years to prepare his son, Mukhriz, to become Prime Minister in 2020. And that meant, since he was no longer going to be Prime Minister, he would need to delegate that job to Abdullah.

And that was what Mahathir meant when he said he spent 15 months discussing with Abdullah what to do before handing power to Abdullah on 1st November 2003 and that Abdullah had agreed to all the terms and conditions. But then, after taking over, Mahathir said, Abdullah broke all his promises and reneged on the agreement.

Mahathir was actually terribly unhappy that after Abdullah took over on 1st November 2003, Umno and Barisan Nasional performed the best ever in Malaysian election history. This proved that Abdullah is far more popular than Mahathir. And if Mahathir had stayed on as Prime Minister, the March 2004 general election would have seen the end of Umno and Barisan Nasional, according to the Special Branch, instead of Umno and Barisan Nasional performing the best ever in Malaysian election history.

So now Mahathir wants to test whether Najib is more popular than him after it was proven that Abdullah is more popular than him (until, that is, Mahathir sabotaged the 2008 general election). And to do that Mahathir wants a Popularity Contest Referendum to be held.

Najib should agree to this. But first they have to agree on who should conduct this Popularity Contest Referendum. And we should give both parties six months to decide and agree on who they want to conduct this Popularity Contest Referendum.

Will it be the SPR? Will it be a foreign polling company (like how Mahathir wants)? And who should be those who can vote in this Popularity Contest Referendum?

So the agreement must be made by or before September 2016.

If we are going to use SPR’s voters list then we have to first make sure that the list is clean because Anwar Ibrahim, Bersih, Pakatan Harapan, etc., all say that the voters list is infested with Bangladeshis and phantom voters. In that case we need to first weed out the phantoms and illegal voters before we can allow that list to be used.

This can easily take 24 months; so by September 2018 we will be ready to hold the Popularity Contest Referendum.

If the SPR voters list is so damaged that it cannot be cleaned up, then we will need to re-register all the voters again. That may take three years. So by September 2019 we will be ready to hold the Popularity Contest Referendum.

Of course, by then the 14th general election will be over and either Barisan Nasional or Pakatan Harapan would be in power. In fact, the Umno party election would also be over as well. But then it does not really matter because all the Popularity Contest Referendum will achieve is to test who is more popular: Najib or Mahathir.

Raja Petra Kamarudin RPK