Mahathir wants Najib brought down before April next year
The Third Force
Last Thursday, the 14th of July, Tun Dr. Mahathir told a press conference that he was in the midst of working out an alliance with several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and opposition leaders to bring about a regime change in Malaysia. According to the former premier, the team would train its guns at the ruling Barisan Nasional during the 14th general election in a concerted bid to force it out of power.
However, the Thursday presser was nothing but a charade, or as they say, a put-up job, to convince Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak that the opposition was dead serious in putting together a Third Force with the capacity to give ruling coalition a run for its money (refer http://www.malaysia-today.net/mahathir-wants-general-election-held-in-march-2017/). Mahathir, both desperate and foolhardy, is convinced that Najib will fall for the trap and in the process, be pressured into calling for a general election next March.
Ask me, and I’ll tell you that the chances of the Prime Minister calling for snap polls are as good as the chances for Datin Seri Wan Azizah to become the next Pope. It’s not likely to happen. And even if it did happen, it would be on Najib’s terms, as the Prime Minister has proven that he is not a man to be cowed or terrorised by anyone, particularly if that someone is Dr. Mahathir.
The thing is, Najib is in no hurry to seek for the dissolution of Parliament. Right now, he has the best seat in the House and can afford to wait for the 13th Malaysian Parliament to run full cycle. However, if Najib were to call for an election this November, it would surely sound the death knell for Mahathir and his minions – none of them will be able to wage the all-out assault that they have so meticulously planned against government even if they did have the billions to do so.
Speaking of billions, several of Mahathir’s associates had undertaken in a secret meeting last December to commit three billion ringgit for the setting up of a new political outfit and a Third Force by this September. Then, right after the government discontinued funds towards the Perdana Leadership Foundation, Mahathir negotiated an extra billion at a roundtable he summoned to discuss his son’s sacking from UMNO.
That figure, however, has since been upped by another billion, bringing the grand total to a whopping five billion ringgit that Mahathir now has credited to his cause of destroying Barisan Nasional. Some of that money – an estimated one billion of the total – is said to have been exhausted earlier this year to step up the ongoing world media campaign against Najib in an effort to blacken the name of the Prime Minister and that of his family.
In retrospect, every other manoeuvre that Mahathir had contrived since September last year was nothing but theatrics, meant to convince Malaysians that he had done his best to ‘save’ Malaysia, but failed. The truth is, Mahathir had long plotted the setting up of a Third Force to wipe Barisan Nasional off the map once and for all.
Even the ‘Citizens’ Declaration’ campaign was built on the expectation that people would take him at his word that he was labouring for Malaysians against a corrupt and evil regime. At a press conference he called on the 5th of March, Mahathir declared that he was there not as a former premier, but as a citizen of Malaysia who wanted Najib to resign for the sake of the country.
Two months later, on the 13th of May, Mahathir declared that the campaign had amassed more than a million signatures ahead of the scheduled year-end deadline. However, a bulk of the signatures was later discovered to have been forged just so that Mahathir could drive the perception that Malaysians were in a hurry to bury Najib.
There is more.
The goal of the campaign from the very beginning was to submit these signatures to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong. The impression given by Mahathir to the people was that the King could sack a sitting Prime Minister if there were a fair number of Malaysians who demanded for it.
However, the signature-collection drive was neither conducted in a transparent manner by an independent statutory body, nor was it sanctioned by legislature, the King himself or even the court of law. It was simply conducted by Mahathir and his group of half-past-six minions in a manner that was never really made public.
This explains why the former premier was confident that his minions would get away with forgery. More than that, he had never intended to submit anything to the Palace in the first place. Sources in the know claim that the former premier knew the King would never have granted him an audience on the pretext of handing in signatures by the people against government.
As it seems, he had planned to hide behind the excuse that since the King refused him an audience, it was proof that even the rulers were slanted towards Najib. Mahathir would then have come out to say that the whole administrative apparatus was corrupt, and that the only way to undo the damage would be for Barisan Nasional to seek for a fresh mandate by calling for early elections.
Mahathir wanted the people to believe that if he could amass 1.25 million signatures in less than three months, it meant the people were really desperate for a regime change. Then, once his son and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin were sacked from UMNO, Mahathir would add that anyone who dared oppose government would fall prey to the Prime Minister’s wrath, which is why it was inevitable that the people be given a chance to vent their frustration through the ballot box.
However, a young computer programmer came out to smother those plans when he revealed how some of Mahathir’s men had solicited a list of names from his database for a certain fee. That more or less put a damper on plans to call for an early election and forced everyone in team Mahathir to re-map their moves.
Like I said, everything that Mahathir did since September last year was meant to convince Malaysians that he had done his best to ’save’ Malaysia, but failed. The mission had all along been to tell the people that the ‘only option left’ was for him to set up a new party and a Third Force to challenge the ruling coalition at the next general election.
Moving on, let us begin to comprehend reasons why Mahathir so desperately needs the general election to be held earlier. While I have already spelt them out in an article that was published by Malaysia Today last Monday (refer http://www.malaysia-today.net/mahathir-wants-general-election-held-in-march-2017/), there is more to the story than what was stated there.
The Third Force was spawn off a discussion that took place primarily between Azmin Ali and Mahathir last August. During the discussion, Mahathir stated very objectively the need for the general election to be held earlier as he saw no other way to topple Najib. However, Mahathir also noted that the only way Najib would call for early elections was if the opposition coalition was reduced to a shamble.
It was then that the duo pandered to split PKR by waging a war of perception against Datin Seri Wan Azizah. It was then also that the idea of setting up The Third Force and a new political party was first tabled for discussion together with two other persons I shall name later. Mahathir emphasised how important it was for Azmin to topple Wan Azizah and to assume leadership of PKR, as it wound trigger a split even within the DAP and PAS.
As luck had it, on the 17th of March earlier this year, Tasek Gelugor MP Shabudin Yahaya told a Dewan Rakyat sitting that something was amiss pertaining to Lim Guan Eng’s purchase of a bungalow at Jalan Pinhorn, Penang. Shahbuddin was the first to suggest that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) be roped in to launch a discovery into transactions that had taken place between the Penang Chief Minister and Ms. Phang Li Khoon.
Suddenly, all plans to have Wan Azizah ousted seemed to come to a dead stop. It seems that Lim Kit Siang had undertaken in an agreement with Mahathir to support the latter’s proposed Citizens’ Declaration in a quid pro quo arrangement that required the latter to ‘work his magic’ against the allegations that were heaped on Guan Eng.
Then, just as Azmin and Mahathir were about to launch an assault against Wan Azizah, a 5th of May helicopter tragedy killed two Barisan Nasional assemblymen and forced a by-election in Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar. That convinced Mahathir and Azmin to pull the brakes on mission ‘Jijah destruct’. Azmin himself did not want to be seen as being responsible for what he already knew was going to be a landslide win for Barisan Nasional at the twin polls.
But time was fast running out for Mahathir.
The former premier had gotten word that the team being whispered to take over the reins of the DAP in the event Guan Eng was jailed did not want anything to do with him. Then, he also feared that the authorities would pile up more charges against him, particularly since he had spread unfounded allegations against Najib in a manner that was subversive to the government, the Federal Constitution and the King.
Finally, Mahathir couldn’t afford Muhyiddin’s sex scandal with the Chinese wife of a famous lawyer, now in litigation, to blow up all over the media. Mahathir needs Muhyiddin more than he ever did to lead The Third Force into the next general election and worried that voters would reject him on account of a looming court battle which is set to unleash havoc in a couple of months.
The Third Force was due for launch in September. Mahathir realised that he could no longer wait for Azmin to decide on a date to launch an attack against Wan Azizah. He knew that rebranding PKR into his own political platform was no longer the option. And that is another reason why he negotiated an additional two billion from his associates, bringing the total sum credited to his cause of destroying Barisan Nasional to a whopping five billion ringgit.
Since one billion has already been expended through media, Mahathir has now in his possession a four billion ringgit voucher to the cause of waging a fierce and merciless onslaught against the ruling coalition beginning this October. Mahathir believes he needs that much to bankroll his campaign and to set up of a Third Force since he would only have five months till March 2017 to wage an all-out assault against Najib and Barisan Nasional.
In the coming days, I will tell you how all of this is related to the snap polls that is being rumoured to take place in Penang. So stay tuned.
