The Mahathir-Azmin conspiracy (Part 1 of 3)
The Third Force
Tun Dr. Mahathir Muhammad has refused to name his choice candidate as head of government, and yet, insists that Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak be brought down to save the nation. His refusal has given venue to speculation that he wants Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to serve as interim Prime Minister (PM), while his son, Dato’ Seri Mukhriz Mahathir, climbs the rungs and claims the title from Mhyiddin in 2021.
But is that really the plan?
The thing is, if Mahathir had Muhyiddin in mind for the top job, he surely would never have forced the latter to share a stage with Lim Kit Siang while passing strictures against Najib. That may or may not have been an error in judgement, but it surely will bear on the former Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) who isn’t likely to remain an UMNO member for long. And that got me thinking – if not Muhyiddin, just who does Mahathir have in mind for the top job?
The haze in my mind began to clear last Thursday when I received confirmation on what had been conveyed to me over a month ago. So believe me when I say this – and I say it with conviction – Muhyiddin was never tasked to warm the seat for Mukhriz. He may have been at one time, but not anymore – that role was delegated to Tengku Tan Sri Razaleigh Hamzah by Mahathir, and I’m willing to go to the depths of hell to prove it.
And I hereby challenge the Kelantan prince to come out and prove me wrong.
But I’ll have to admit, though, I haven’t the faintest idea how Razaleigh intends to wade his way to the top job, though some say he was tasked with canvassing support from Members of Parliament by getting them to sign statutory declarations (SD’s) backing him as the next PM.
For the sake of argument, let’s go with the SD hypothesis, and say that he gets a truckload of MP’s to support his campaign. So then Razaleigh becomes PM, and right after that kicks Dato’ Seri Zahid Hamidi out by the wayside. Mukhriz rises up the rungs, becomes his deputy, and by 2021, he is the next PM of Malaysia.
Well, guess who is going to be DPM then?
And that’s the whole purpose of this story. To answer that question, we would have to re-examine events that took place just before the 13th general election and ride all the way through Anwar’s conviction on charges of sodomy. Then, we’ll figure out how and why Mahathir had hijacked Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s coup plot against the government and just who Mahathir has in mind as Mukhriz’s deputy.
The lead up to the 13th general election
Let us begin by coming clear on one thing – Anwar is all sizzle and no steak. He comes up with exciting and aggrandizing schemes that seem promising at first, but almost always turn to be duds.
Take the night before the 16th of September in 2008 for example – the PKR de facto chief looked poised to build on the opposition coalition’s breakout performance at the 13th general election by marching into Putrajaya and wresting control of the government. But in a matter of 24 hours, he went from hero to zero – Barisan Nasional (BN) was still in power, and they were already calling him the perfect failure.
Failure or not, he never gave up. Four years on, both he and Lim Kit Siang began discussing Selangor and agreed to sabotage Tan Sri Khalid ibrahim’s electoral campaign in Port Klang. But I’ve already addressed the Port Klang conspiracy in a preceding article, and you can read more about it by clicking on the following link: http://www.malaysia-today.net/surat-pedas-anwar-my-foot-what-anwars-fooking-letter-failed-to-mention-part-1/.
Suffice to say, Anwar told Kit Siang late in 2012 that Azmin would be made the fifteenth Menteri Besar (MB) of Selangor. He took stock in the idea that Azmin would help channel funds from Selangor’s coffers once he was MB to finance a revolt against Najib’s administration.
Now this may come as a surprise to you, but Anwar had planned to lure Dato’ Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi into a partnership of sorts amid the hostile and chaotic climate he intended to stir at the nation’s administrative capital. The PKR de facto chief realised he needed an UMNO insider who was charismatic and wielded the right degree of influence in the party to support an UMNO-PKR led unity government.
Zahid fit the bill on all accounts. The then defence minister, being the most popular among vice presidents in UMNO, commanded the respect of a large number of party leaders who Anwar believed would agree to sweep Najib out of office and support a unity government.
So contrary to popular belief, Anwar never did have a Pakatan Rakyat government in mind – he knew then as he does now that no measure of public unrest could trigger the fall of BN. Instead, what he really wanted was to be DPM under a Zahid led unity government. But not only was Zahid oblivious to this fact, so was Anwar’s wife, Rafizi Ramli, Kit Siang and the better half of Pakatan Rakyat.
But what was the incentive?
One, in particular – Anwar was hung up on the idea that once he became DPM, he would run rings around the judiciary with the help of Zahid and the Bar Council to avert a jail term. As a matter of fact, he had already been working on means to subvert his trial by soliciting a fake press release from the then Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jude Pereira.
Prior to the 13th general election, Jude was contacted by former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Musa Hassan, who later referred the DSP to MyWatch Chairman Sri Sanjeevan Ramakrishnan. According to Jude, Sanjeevan had met him at the lobby of PJ Hilton and asked if he was willing to issue a statement to the effect that there existed a conspiracy in his investigations against Anwar.
“I told Sanjeevan that I could not make such a statement, as my investigations showed no conspiracy,” said Jude. According to him, he had repeated his stance during a phone conversation he had with Anwar, adding that the call was arranged by Sanjeevan at the same hotel.
So you see, everything that Anwar did prior to the polls was to avert a jail term, and that included soliciting support from the bulk of UMNO leaders and grassroots. Without Zahid in the lead, he couldn’t dream of having UMNO leaders vouch for him in his bid to pressure the courts and escape a conviction. That is why, if you believed that the PKR de facto leader had contrived a coup plot to become the PM of Malaysia, you were dead wrong.
But then, so were millions of Malaysians and the Pakatan Rakyat leadership, and you can’t blame them – Anwar tends to keep the real deal under the hat by saying one thing and doing just the opposite. Back in 2012, he left you feeling that being PM was all he wanted, but as we have seen, the truth could never have been more sinister and convoluted.
Moving on, Anwar told Kit Siang that Wan Azizah would contest a by election in the event he was sent to jail. Once a member of the state’s legislature, she would trump up support against Azmin’s leadership and wrest control of the state from him. When asked why he wasn’t willing to pitch her as candidate for the general election, Anwar argued that it would arouse suspicion all round, particularly among Azmin’s supporters and the electorate.
But he meant none of what he said. Anwar being Anwar, he floated the canard to lure Kit Siang and Rafizi into supporting Azmin’s candidacy. Once that was settled, he conferred with the senior Lim and discussed ways to prevent Khalid from being returned as Selangor MB. Their discussion ended with the agreement that Khalid would contest the Port Klang seat to break the synergy he (Khalid) enjoyed with his constituents in Ijok (refer http://www.malaysia-today.net/surat-pedas-anwar-my-foot-what-anwars-fooking-letter-failed-to-mention-part-1/).
Ok then, so Anwar did not want his wife to be the Selangor MB – but why Azmin?
Well, here’s the thing – it is not that Anwar loathed the idea of having his wife become MB. It is just that he simply did not have the balls to offend Azmin. The latter seemed to wield some kind of a cryptic hold on Anwar, which had to do with a sex and corruption scandal yet to break the internet. No, it’s not the one we’ve been exposed to thus far, or the one Rafizi has been going to town with in recent days – this is different.
To be continued…
