Nazir, why are you still stuck in 2015?

Nazir is still stuck in 2015. A lot of things have happened since then to make 2015 no longer relevant but Nazir has not woken up to this fact. For one he will not be made the Finance Minister if Najib falls because Mahathir has promised that job to Kit Siang. And Mahathir is no longer with Umno like in 2015 but is now leading the opposition.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Nazir Razak is still talking about events that occurred in 2015. Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. Things are moving so fast that what was hot news two months ago is stale news today, even more so when it was something that happened two years ago.

All you have to do is to monitor what Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad says. Less than six months ago he said that in the event Umno and Barisan Nasional are ousted his choice of Prime Minister is Muhyiddin Yassin. Then he met up with Anwar Ibrahim and after that said it is still too early to talk about who should become Prime Minister.

On 3rd December 2016 Mahathir told Lim Kit Siang he wants his son, Mukhriz, to become Prime Minister and he agreed to Kit Siang’s demand for the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister to trade-off with DAP’s support for Mukhriz to become Prime Minister. (READ HERE: ‘DAP never asked to become PM, only deputy’)

Mahathir agrees to Kit Siang for Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister if DAP supports Mukhriz for Prime Minister

So, over just six months things have changed and we have moved from east to west. For sure whatever happened in 2015 is so far down the road that it is no longer relevant. But yet Nazir is still talking about 2015 that no longer has any bearing on what is going on today and is no longer going to be the deciding factor in the next general election.

In 2015, Nazir attacked his brother because he was promised he would be made the new Finance Minister if Najib falls. Nazir was lobbying for the post of Finance Minister but Najib knew if he appointed his own brother as Finance Minister that would be political suicide. Mahathir knew that Nazir wanted the job so he promised him the job if he would work against his brother.

How can you trust someone who puts personal ambition before blood ties? Instead Nazir should be singing the song ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’. Nazir is prepared to sell his own brother just to get what he wants and if his brother will not give it to him he will work with his brother’s enemies.

But then Nazir overlooked one very important thing. In 2015 Mahathir was still in Umno and Muhyiddin Yassin was the Deputy Prime Minister. So, if they had successfully ousted Najib they had the power to make Nazir the Finance Minister. That was in 2015, or up to July 2015. Since then many things have changed. Now, for Nazir to become the Finance Minister, the opposition must first take power. And for sure the opposition would not want him as Finance Minister. They have their own candidate and in December 2016 Mahathir agreed for Kit Siang to become Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

In 2015, or early 2015, they needed Nazir to attack his brother so that people would say if Najib’s own brother can attack him then it must be really very bad. Nazir had to talk about things such as 1MDB needs to be solved, we need to be more transparent, an independent inquiry must be set up, a special task force must be set up, 1MDB is causing a trust deficit, Umno and Barisan Nasional are going to lose the next general election if 1MDB remained unsolved, and so on.

Mahathir needed Nazir to attack his brother and promised him the post of Finance Minister if the Prime Minister falls

All that, and more, has been said but still Najib did not fall, even with his own brother attacking him. So they really do not need Nazir any longer. If his attacks were working then Najib would have fallen in 2015. At that time many people were saying that there was no way Najib can survive 2015, especially with his own brother attacking him. That was what they said in 2015. It is now 2017 and Najib is still Prime Minister.

Nazir says that Malaysia needs a NCC2. “1MDB scandal and lack of trust necessitates NCC2,” said Nazir. The National Consultative Council or NCC was set up in 1970 after the May 13 race riots, what many label as the darkest period in Malaysian history. “The lack of trust in the federal government and its key institutions due to the 1MDB controversy have made the convening of a second National Consultative Council (NCC2) more urgent,” said Nazir.

So, Nazir is saying that the 1MDB issue is as serious as ‘May 13’, a race riot that ‘officially’ took hundreds of lives but ‘underground reports’ say it was more like in the thousands. Whatever it may be, most Malaysians consider ‘May 13’ worse than the Japanese occupation of Malaya from 1941 to 1945. And Nazir considers 1MDB as bad or worse than ‘May 13’. Even when Mahathir lost RM30 billion gambling on the FOREX market, which is equivalent to RM60 billion today, Lim Kit Siang did not ask for a NCC2 to be set up.

Nazir is giving an impression that the next general election is going to depend on 1MDB. The ‘Chinese Tsunami’ and swing to the opposition started in 2008. At that time Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was the Prime Minister, not Najib. And there was no 1MDB yet. So how does Nazir explain this swing and the Chinese Tsunami when Najib was not the Prime Minister and there was no 1MDB or 1MBD issue yet?

Mahathir has dumped 1MDB and has shifted his attacks to investments from China and BR1M

Election swings do not depend on just one factor. In 2008 there were many factors involved. For one Umno had an idiot as its Information Chief and Minister of Information. He told the Prime Minister that the internet is not a factor and is not going to swing the voters. He even publicly said that kids use the internet to play games or for people to look for cheap airline tickets and not as a source of news.

What Zainuddin Maidin did not realise is that since 2004 (the year that Malaysia Today was set up) the opposition had been taking advantage of blogs, the social media and the internet to campaign. In November 2007, a Bersih rally was held that attracted tens of thousands of participants followed by the Hindraf rally (all through the use of the internet). In the 2008 general election, Chinese were wearing PAS T-shirts and carrying PAS flags while Malays were wearing DAP T-shirts and carrying DAP flags. In one ceramah I attended in Kelang, Indians on motorcycles were escorting our car with PAS flags and were shouting ‘Allah Akbar’.

It was a combination of all those that triggered the swing and the Chinese Tsunami. It was not 1MDB or the anti-Najib movement. And Mahathir was very much behind getting the Chinese, even those from MCA, to vote opposition to punish Abdullah Badawi and teach him a lesson for not resigning when Mahathir told him to. And did not Mahathir resign from Umno at that time and said he would not rejoin Umno until Abdullah Badawi leaves office?

Mahathir wanted a Chinese Tsunami so that Abdullah Badawi could be kicked out

Why is Nazir ignoring all these factors, factors that resulted in the 2008 general election disaster for Umno and Barisan Nasional? Why is he saying that 1MDB is the factor, and the factor that is causing a trust deficit? And why is he talking about NCC2 as if 1MDB is just like ‘May 13’, that saw the formation of the first NCC?

I suppose Nazir is suggesting that if NCC2 is set up and 1MDB is solved (and what he means by ‘solved’ we really do not know and whether he is alleging that 1MDB is still not yet solved) then the 90% Chinese who voted opposition in 2008 and 2013 would swing back to Barisan Nasional and MCA-Gerakan are going to win 40 Parliament seats, Umno 100 Parliaments seats, and another 30 non-Umno seats from East Malaysia, giving Barisan Nasional 170 or 77% of the Parliament seats?

Nazir needs to get with it. Even Mahathir no longer talks about 1MDB because he knows it is no longer relevant and too outdated. Mahathir now talks about Chinese investments, BR1M, Haji Mabrur, Forest City, and so on. Mahathir’s July 2015 coup failed. Instead, Najib beheaded all the coup leaders. Mahathir’s October 2015 vote of no confidence in Parliament never happened. Mahathir’s December 2015 vote of no confidence at the Umno assembly backfired. Instead Mahathir was shamed in front of 3,000 Umno delegates. Only Nazir is still talking about 1MDB.

A very unhappy Mahathir at the December 2015 Umno assembly when his attempted coup backfired

Since 2015 Andre Xavier Justo has faced trial and has revealed that the 1MDB documents that were leaked to the media had been doctored. He said he did not doctor those documents and he does not know who did but definitely they are fabrications. Wall Street Journal has admitted that the RM2.6 billion that went into Najib’s personal bank account did, in fact, come from Arab donors after all. Nazir, however, is still talking about the old stories when there are so many new stories since then.