Dr M’s vendetta over treatment of two prized sons – Mukhriz and Proton
Eric See-To
Last week’s revelation by Rural and Regional Development Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob that Dr Mahathir Mohamad is going against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak due to personal anger (or dendam) because several of his demands to Najib were rejected deserves serious thought.
Among other things, Ismail mentioned that Najib rejected Mahathir’s request to privatise MAS to a friend and that another friend’s sports betting monopoly license be approved as well as billions in aid to Proton.
Let us go one step further to the events immediately preceding the famous announcement in August 2014 that Mahathir had withdrawn support for Najib.
I believe that these events over the 10-month period were critical to driving Mahathir over the edge to go against Najib at all cost – which eventually led to the formation of Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) and Mahathir’s candidacy to be prime minister again.
In September 2013, Mahathir’s son Mukhriz defied calls that the status quo for the three vice presidents of Umno be maintained and decided to enter the contest – despite Mukhriz having lost badly in the Umno Youth head election in 2008.
Predictably, Mukhriz lost again in the vice-president race when the results were announced on Oct 21, 2013.
Mahathir was obviously angry about his son’s defeat and had blamed Najib for not supporting his son and accused Najib of supporting his cousin Hishammuddin Hussein who had beat Mukhriz in the final position for vice-president.
A foreign news portal at the time quoted Mahathir’s angry response:
“’We are told that they’ve eliminated corruption during the recent Umno election, I am not convinced,’ Mahathir told a conference at the country’s administrative capital of Putrajaya.
“Although he didn’t mention Najib by name, he said: ‘I think there was a lot of money involved, going into the millions, and loads of people who should not be getting votes were getting votes because of the money they spent.’”
Left out of Umno supreme council
Further disappointment followed for both father and son.
Although Mukhriz had publicly stated his desire to be appointed by the president as one of the members of Umno’s supreme council, his name was left out in the Nov 30, 2013 announcement.
Najib had believed that Mukhriz, having been given the post of menteri besar of Kedah, needed more experience and to prove himself before moving up the party.
Furthermore, Mukhriz will still be attending supreme council meetings by virtue of his position as mentri besar. Therefore, there was no need for the additional appointment to be a member of the council.
I am sure Mahathir would not have been pleased with this turn of events as Mahathir had said many times that “they still owe it all to me” and believed he had elevated Najib as the son of Tun Razak to be president and thus the favour should be returned to his son Mukhriz.
It is no surprise then that on the first day of the Umno general assembly on Dec 2, 2013, Mahathir shocked many by announcing that he was resigning as Petronas’ advisor.
He had cited that at 88, he was too old and that doctors had advised him to step down for health reasons.
Due to the recent events and the timing, many were not fooled at this open attempt by Mahathir to show his displeasure at Najib for his son’s defeat. The international news agency Reuters commented in their report about Mahathir’s resignation:
“His (Mahathir) departure, however, comes as relations with Prime Minister Najib Razak have grown strained in recent months, particularly over Najib’s refusal to endorse Mahathir’s son for an influential ruling party post. The Petronas board reports directly to the prime minister.”
Despite his reason of ill-health and being too old to be Petronas advisor, Mahathir then took up the more strenuous position of chairperson of Proton Bhd five months later in May 2014 .
Mahathir’s ‘other son’
It is generally acknowledged that Mahathir had long considered Proton as his baby, his other son if you may.
Proton had been running considerable losses since DRB-Hicom, owned by his long-time friend Syed Mokhtar, took over the company two years ago. In doing so, Proton no longer belonged to the government and had become a 100 percent privately-owned company.
Proton was deep in the red and had become a serious problem for the DRB-Hicom group. Over the past year before Mahathir became chairperson, the government had rejected repeated requests from Proton for billions in financial aid on the grounds that it was a private company.
It is generally acknowledged that making Mahathir as chairperson of Proton was to apply pressure on the government to approve a free grant of RM3 billion to Proton as aid.
“With Dr M at Proton, Putrajaya can’t say ‘no’ to pleas for money”, said one report
“The emergence of 88-year-old Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as Proton’s chairman will strengthen the national carmaker’s hand against the government. According to some people, it was Mahathir’s disappointment at the refusal of both Petroliam Nasional Bhd and the government to fund Proton’s RM3 billion transformation plan that prompted him to take on a more prominent role in the national carmaker,” reported The Edge at that time.
Mahathir himself had also repeatedly said that Proton deserved such grants from the government.
However, this was not to be as the government continued to reject the request which led to Mahathir announcing he was withdrawing support for Najib’s government on his blog on Aug 18, 2014.
The reasons he gave then were unhappiness over the government’s policies of abolishing ISA, giving out BR1M, implementing the minimum wage and the accusation that Najib prioritised imported products over local products which was generally believed to refer to Proton.
Nothing was said about the RM2.6 billion or 1MDB in his announcement then.
Ironically as Pakatan Harapan’s manifesto for GE14 shows, Mahathir has now U-turned on the majority of that unhappiness he had cited before in the form of more freedom, the continuation of BR1M as well as further increasing the minimum wage by 50 percent to RM1,500 per month.
Previously Mahathir had written that the government imposing a minimum wage of RM900 per month in the year 2011 would cause great inflation, cause our businesses to go into ruin and reduce the competitiveness of Malaysia. But now, his own manifesto wants to increase this to RM1,5000 per month.
On hindsight, Mahathir must have felt deep disappointment and his ego severely hurt over the treatment of his two prized sons in a span of 10 months – Mukhriz and Proton.
He would have held Najib personally responsible and this disappointment would have manifested itself as burning anger and a great need for revenge.
Initially, Mahathir had schemed and tried for two years to topple Najib by working with others within Umno but failed. This includes the RM2.6 billion and 1MDB investigations
Two months after Muhyiddin Yassin was removed as deputy prime minister, Muhyiddin had told the Umno supreme council members that there was indeed a conspiracy to topple Najib but that he was not involved.
Muhyiddin also referred to the RM2.6 billion in Najib’s account and said then he had no problems with this as he knows that it has always been the practice from way back that there is a special Umno president’s account.
Until today, Muhyiddin refuses to confirm or deny what he said then even though an audio of his admission had been leaked for more than two years.
After scheming for more than two years and failing to topple Najib while still in Umno, Mahathir left Umno to work with Harapan – including his former mortal enemies Anwar Ibrahim and DAP.
Many DAP leaders had repeatedly said they were using Mahathir but Mahathir does not mind being used as long as he gets his goal to exact personal revenge.
You also have to wonder what concessions Mahathir had given to DAP and PKR to strike this unlikely alliance.
This would also explain why Mahathir had U-turned on almost every principle that he had before – Anwar, ISA, minimum wage, GST, DAP, controlling the press etc.
He is merely using all possible angles, saying whatever he wants and doing whatever it takes to exact his personal revenge and smooth his personal vendetta.
Nothing is more telling than during the launch of the Harapan manifesto for GE14 where his 45-minute speech only mentioned the items in the manifesto a couple of times but he mentioned Najib’s name more than 100 times.
As the head of Harapan and the prime minister candidate, Mahathir should have explained to the people how wonderful his manifesto is, what problems this manifesto will solve, how the people will benefit and what his vision for the country is.
Instead, he used this golden platform to launch another series of personal attacks against Najib to assuage his personal anger.
Truth be told, I am not even certain that Mahathir knows what is actually inside the manifesto. Not that he cares since his need for revenge is above everything else – even his own country’s future.
ERIC SEE-TO is the deputy director of the BN strategic communications department.
