How Shafie Apdal infiltrated the Najib circle and leaked sensitive info to Mahathir
The Third Force
Dato’ Seri Mohd. Shafie Apdal (see news item below) was once the Rural and Regional Development Minister serving under the ruling Barisan Nasional. He was among the three UMNO vice-presidents before leaving the party to join the Sabah Heritage Party (WARISAN), a new party he founded which the Registrar of Societies (RoS) approved on the 17th of October 2016.
On the 28th of July 2015, he lost his Rural and Regional Development portfolio following a Cabinet reshuffle that was meant to eradicate government from the influence of saboteurs allied to former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad. The Prime Minister had just come to know of Shafie’s dealings with Mahathir and how he was in the plot to destabilise government. But there is a lot Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak does not know.
Shafie was a key member of a secret movement in UMNO that came to be known as the UMNO Shadow Movement (USM). Plans to organise such a movement were contrived in 2009 itself by Mahathir who, together with Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, foiled Dato’ Seri Mohd Ali Rustam’s bid for the post of UMNO Deputy President. The duo bribed UMNO insiders to leak Rustam’s dealings with a group of lobbyists to persons close to the party’s disciplinary board.
With Rustam out of the picture, Mahathir promised to support Muhyiddin’s eventual bid for the country’s number one post provided he (Muhyiddin) found ways to turn Dato’ Seri Mukhriz into his deputy. Once an agreement was reached, the former premier set aside a budget for the establishment of a black-ops team that would work beneath the shadows to infiltrate Najib’s circle of media advisors and strategists.
Muhyiddin was tasked with spearheading the movement. The mission was to ensure that the Prime Minister’s administration would be so full of flubs, Mahathir would have reason to demand his exit from government when the time was right. In August 2013, a preliminary version of the shadow movement was launched with a Malacca born Dato’ Seri put in charge of rallying media support for Mukhriz.
What was Shafie’s role?
Well, his job was to get as close as he possibly could with both Najib and his wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor. The former minister was tasked with infiltrating the very sanctum of Najib’s conscience, such that the Prime Minister and his wife would feel confident enough to entrust him with secrets. When that actually began to happen, Shafie channeled whatever info he received to the Malacca born Dato’ Seri, who then passed the info on to Mahathir.
The former premier would then discuss with his strategists before preempting or torpedoing anything good the Prime Minister intended for the country. That led to a great many number of assaults, including fake financial analyses that Ho Kay Tat got The Malaysian Insider and The Edge Media Group to publish in a bid to scare the bejeesus out of local and foreign investors.
For each secret Shafie revealed, he got a lot of money – in cash, parts of which he would hand over to his associates who would then bank them into their accounts. This fellow was a rogue politician from day one. While he was Rural and Regional Development Minister, he even leaked secrets pertaining his ministry and those pertaining ministries of his friends to Mahathir, including some sensitive information that related to the Ministry of Finance which Ahmad Husni was also in charge of.
