Mahathir tells the rakyat to twist the rulers arms
The Third Force
I’ll admit that the title is a little overboard. But the idea is just about as idiotic as the statement Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad made last Sunday. According to the former premier, the Royals could intervene and urge Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak to resign as Prime Minister (PM).
The whole problem with the Tun is his understanding of history – or rather, the lack of understanding. Ask him who invaded Siam, and he may just tell you it was some Japanese named Nah Jib San. And it wouldn’t matter to him if it were a lie. Mahathir knows just as well as I do that Malaysians are suckers for yellow press and tabloid journalism and rarely bother to check the facts.
Heck, forget the press or the facts – Malaysians are just suckers.
Last Sunday, he took to the podium at the ‘People’s Congress’ in Shah Alam and got away with murder. According to him, the rulers were once pressured into boycotting the swearing-in of the Malayan Union governor-general. He was referring to protests that had taken place in 1946 – by the time journalists had his speech in print, the subtext was plain and comprehensible – he wanted a revolt.
The former premier was without a doubt instigating anarchy. More to the point, he tried to impress upon his audience the mystery that was the streets, and the insinuation was just that flagrant – nothing beats street protests when trying to bring a PM down. Drawing parallels to the 1946 demonstrations, he told his audience that they had the power to bring pressure to bear on the rulers to topple the PM.
“If millions ask for Najib to be removed, the rulers would have to accept this,” he said, adding, “If we want to show the rulers how much the rakyat want Najib to be removed, I believe that even though the rulers don’t have the power enshrined under the constitution, they will make efforts to remove him.”
Yes. To Mahathir, the people’s power means the power to twist the ruler’s arms.
Any historian attending the event would immediately have noticed the hole in Mahathir’s storyline – it was large enough to drive a Proton through. But it is just as well that he chairs the troubled national car-maker. He knows better than anyone that Proton couldn’t afford to build bridges across holes and would just go around them.
Proton, Malaysians, Martians – they’re peas in a pod to him. At the Sunday congress, he had the foresight to see people going around the holes in his storylines without stopping to ask anything. Who were the demonstrators, and why were they demonstrating? How did it all start, and where did it all end?
Last Sunday, he told us nothing.
Someone might want to remind Mahathir what really happened on the 1st of February 1946. On that day, several Malay nationalists led by a person named Awang bin Hassan took to the streets in Johor to demonstrate against its ruler, Sultan Ibrahim. Within hours, the rally had grown into a wider protest that assembled at the Sultan Abu Bakar State Mosque with but one demand – that Sultan Ibrahim be dethroned.
The protest, while driven by repugnance for the Malayan Union, was really against the state ruler himself and not to petition the ruler against anyone. Already we can see the gaping hole in Mahathir’s storyline. But there is more.
Onn Jaafar was among those present at the mosque on that day. Chanting nationalistic slogans, protesters were emotionally charged and angry with Sultan Ibrahim who, according to them, had ignored tenets to the State Constitution which clearly forbade foreign powers from taking up the reins of government. In short, they accused the Johor state ruler of selling the Malays down the river.
The whole episode rooted from events that took place the year before. On the 8th of September 1945, the Johor ruler was approached by a British official named H.C. Willan, who was there to interview His Royal Highness over the Malayan Union proposal scheme. Living at Istana Pelangi with his Romanian wife, the ruler warmed up to Willan almost immediately and spoke of his desire to visit England by year end. All in all, he agreed to sign a treaty with the British that supported the Malayan Union proposal treatise.
Several Malay nationalists saw the Johor state ruler being taken in by the British. While other rulers were opposed to the proposal on grounds that it would dissipate their Royal status, Sultan Ibrahim seemed motivated by his desire to visit England the year end. And that angered the state’s aristocrats.
With His Royal highness’s integrity at the brink of a collapse, several monarchists who were themselves nationalists and aristocrats worked with the Palace to a course of action that was as much damage control as it was a means to safeguard the eminency of the rulers.
Onn Jaafar, himself a courtier (or orang istana), organised several Malay congresses that gave impulse to discussions that related to Royalty and the question of the Malay symbol, which attendees felt needed to be secured at the vanguard of national politics. These discussions culminated with the formation of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) on the 10th of May 1946 at the Johor Palace.
The long and short of it is this – UMNO was established by an aristocratic order that, together with the learned civil servants, championed the cause of the palace and the Malay identity. While the party did take off by assailing the British Malayan Union proposal, it did so within the prospective framework of an aristocratic government and only later began to accommodate tenets to British democracy.
But the political party – which was what it gradually evolved into – retained its aristocratic base and almost always devoted the higher rungs of the party ladder for traditional elitists. And that is what bothered Mahathir since the early fifties.
Seeing the party beleaguered by aristocratism, Mahathir began infusing his own brand of elitism – corporate elitism – almost immediately after taking over its reins in 1981. The former elitists – nobles, courtiers and the wiser civil servants – lost their rights to make the call during elections or nominations, as their roles were farmed out to powerful capitalists who began funding Mahathir’s choice candidates.
And that is how he rid the party of aristocratism in the eighties before he went for the (then) Johor state ruler to pivot an assault on the Malaysian monarchical institution.
Last Sunday, Mahathir opened with the preambles to some version of history as he remembered it. Then, he began to spin the narrative to fit his audience. And it’s not too difficult to imagine why – he wanted to bury the party’s aristocratic base along with Najib once and for all.
And the way he saw fit to do that was to tell the people that the streets had the power to bring rulers to heel. Hence, his Sunday address was a sugar-coated assault on the palace. What he told his audience was this – the aristocrats are as trivial as you want it to be. Climb on their heads, and they’ll sing to your tune.
Seeing Najib clinging on to power longer than anticipated crushed the former premier’s hopes of seeing his son rise to power. More than that, Najib was ripping Mahathirism out of UMNO and returning the party to its traditional aristocratic roots. And that gave Mahathir sleepless nights.
But to be fair, let us cut the old man some slack. Let us say, Mahathir was referring to protests that took place after UMNO had been established.
But wouldn’t that make him a bigger fool? Protests that had taken place after the 10th of May 1946 weren’t by the people to petition rulers against the Malayan Union. Rather, they were protests by the aristocratic class itself that intended to safeguard the interests of His Royal Highness the Sultan and his subjects, largely regarded to comprise only the Malays.
In short, it had nothing to do with people power – it was the ruler’s power.
