MALAYSIA TODAY SPECIAL REPORT

MALAYSIA TODAY SPECIAL REPORT


Raja Petra Kamarudin

The time on the clock showed four in the morning. Former Deputy Prime Minister Musa Hitam just couldn’t close his eyes and fall asleep. The heat of the day was still bugging him in spite of the full blast of the air conditioner hanging over his bed. At 72, Musa had long left the world of politics, shying away from the dangers that he courted when he dared challenge the might of his boss, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, nearly 20 years ago. Since failing to wrest power from Mahathir, Musa has slipped quietly into oblivion, reaping scraps from corporate tables and pretending to be a diplomat. There were many nights before this when Musa could not sleep, but none were like this particular one. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead. It was as if some nightmare was haunting him and preventing him from falling into slumber-land. Alarm bells kept ringing in his head, harking back to the days when not only his political career but the fate of the nation hung in balance.

Earlier that day, Musa had attended the great fete celebrating UMNO’s 50th Anniversary. As a former top leader of the party, he had been placed on the dais together with other veterans lined up like ancient Chinese ancestral portraits. They looked down from the heights of the stage onto the current actors singing the sacrifices of leaders past and drawing all the credit they could for their own future benefits. Musa had been placed like a precious avatar next to the grandest UMNO deity, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the only living former UMNO President, a man with an almost god-like status amongst the ranks of the former leaders. But it was not the celebration that day that kept Musa from sleeping. It was what Mahathir had whispered to him throughout the day that was nagging him and prevented him from sleeping.

Actually, you could not really call it a whisper. It was obvious that Mahathir was unhappy, maybe even angry. And the brunt of his anger was the man who stood on the steps of the grand palace of Johor Bahru, his anointed successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Mahathir could scarcely hide his contempt for the man; cursing Abdullah’s recent actions which he felt undermined not only his legacy but the future of the nation itself. Mahathir hissed. Finally, apparently quite perturbed with the constant needling of the man standing beside him, Musa asked Mahathir what he was going to do about it. And it was Mahathir’s reply that shocked Musa so much that now he could not fall asleep. Mahathir told Musa his plans for deposing Abdullah.

Musa knew what Mahathir had told him was a decision that the UMNO giant had no intention of reversing. Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Mahathir had cast all his doubts aside and was determined to pursue a final battle that would either mark him as the saviour of the nation or stamp his skin with the scarlet word ‘Traitor’. Mahathir had decided he would take up the role of chief conspirator in the great plot to kill the political career of Abdullah Badawi, once and for all. Only thus can he be assured that he will not be dying with his eyes wide open.

Musa reached for his phone and dialled a number, reaching a certain Member of Parliament from Johor who could be counted on to deliver a certain message to Abdullah. While he did not completely agree with what Abdullah was doing -- in fact, Musa was one of the first to voice his concern to Abdullah that his son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, was becoming too powerful and too rich an advisor -- Musa did not want Malaysian politics to again be embroiled in the cutthroat savageness that he witnessed in 1987 and again in 1998. As a Johore Malay of the old school, Musa’s mantra, rightly or wrongly, has always been to yield to the lesser of two evils -- the other alternative being a full-blown war where both parties suffer casualties and every top leader gets killed. It was better, Musa felt, to be called timid and cautious rather than die fighting a battle that everyone will come out of fatally wounded.

So Musa decided to tip off the Member of Parliament and, in no uncertain terms, convey this most crucial message to Abdullah. The message was simple and came in three parts. First, Mahathir was about to strike and his aim was to remove Abdullah from power. Second, it was a decision that Mahathir had fully considered and any effort to mitigate the situation by trying to mediate would be fruitless. Third, he (Musa) had chosen his side, and his side is with Abdullah against the might of Mahathir from which he once shirked in terror.

Abdullah Badawi got the message later the next morning. He did not understand why Musa felt the attack was imminent. After all, he had gone out of his way to try and assuage Mahathir’s anger with the most subtle moves that would usually soothe the anger of the Grand Old Man. But Abdullah had long played a double game. While he tried portraying what Musa was later to call ‘ an elegant silence’, his underlings from the most sycophantic cabinet minister to the littlest of UMNO branch leader have been constantly told that many of Mahathir’s policies were no longer working and Abdullah was in repair mode, trying to make things better for everyone before it was too late.

The press under the control of Kalimullah Hassan Masheerul Hassan had been dressed up to appear more open in preparation for the day when they could, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, declare that they were freer and more critical now than they ever had been under Mahathir. Even so, when the attack finally came, the Khairy-controlled press scrambled to vilify Dr Mahathir. Some of the attempts were actually quite comical. For example, Datuk Kamarulzaman of TV3 went so far as to interview ketua kampungs and penghulus to voice their support for Abdullah. Even the often-erudite Rehman Rashid could do no more than write a so-called open letter to Dr Mahathir, nauseatingly praising Abdullah’s so-called ‘open press policy’ without declaring of course that this policy gave him back the job from which Abdullah Ahmad had dismissed him before. In other words, the small bit players came out with their little pen-knives to scratch Mahathir’s skin and laugh gleefully as it bled a little. The truth was that the efforts to undermine Mahathir began from day one of Abdullah’s administration. It was a deliberate and cohesive strategy devised by Khairy, presented many months before the handover to the team he had formed to play the role of Abdullah’s crutches.

In the first Khairy Chronicles, we had outlined how Khairy was going to demolish Mahathir’s legacy piece by piece. It has taken two years, but the plans that were hatched those many months before have now come to a boil. Mahathir’s engineered downfall will be disguised as a reform movement spearheaded by Abdullah, or at least tacitly endorsed by his administration.

The first fruits have already ripened. Mahathir’s blatant misuse of the judiciary, his favouring of certain business interests, the usage of government funds for grand projects, and other perceived abuses, have now been brought to the surface and laid bare for all and sundry to feast their eyes on. The next stage would be as Khairy himself remarked earlier to his close friends (and what these Chronicles had stated before): that certain figures from the Mahathir administration would now be hauled in front of show trials where their ‘sins’ would be exposed and ‘appropriate’ punishment meted out. The verdict would be a direct indictment of the middle leadership under Mahathir, but the actual target would be the Grand Architect himself. Mahathir’s name will be dragged through courts all over the land and he will be described as the evil genius who directed the corrupt and abusive actions of his underlings in his 22 years as Malaysia’s Prime Minister.

Eventually, Khairy’s target would be to put at least one or two former and key Mahathir underlings in jail. Prominent amongst these targets are the group of people who served as poster boys of Mahathir’s corporate agenda -- in other words, those who are closest to former Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin. Daim has always been Khairy’s most obvious target. Although many credit him as being the planner of Malaysia’s economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, because Daim had always attributed the credit to Mahathir, it is easy to tar Daim as the bad boy without feeling too guilty about it. Obviously, Daim’s record is not clean if compared to other Finance Ministers, with the possible exception of Anwar Ibrahim, Daim was known to have a circle of trusted lieutenants whom he fed with money, positions and contracts.

But surely Mahathir knows all this. Indeed he does. One of the factors that triggered Mahathir’s outburst was a recent discovery brought to his attention by one of his former political secretaries. It seems Khairy had had a meeting with several former judges who were planning an attack upon their more corrupt ‘brothers’ who had been promoted by Mahathir mainly for their subservience. Of course, some of Khairy’s new ‘friends’ were sincere in wanting to reform the judiciary. But let there be no doubt about it -- most of the others are as corrupt as their future victims and they only want to support Khairy in order to save their own skins. There is no black and white in the Malaysian judiciary, only shades of grey. All the clean judges have already been kicked out along with Salleh Abbas while many others had either died, depressed and broken, or have slipped into obscurity.

Can anyone say that Abdullah’s reforms are supported only by clean hands? It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the many voices speaking out in support of the Prime Minister against Mahathir are those whose life and career have been built on ill-gotten gains. These include almost all the current cabinet ministers, mere residue (saki-baki) from the Mahathir days. These people are not clean. Some like Nazri Aziz are so obviously corrupt you can smell the corruption like a dog that can smell a bitch in heat as he saunters into the room. Others, notably Muhyiddin Yassin, are as guilty of money politics as the deposed Isa Samad -- and who was spared execution only because he is perceived as a puerile nobody and not deemed dangerous to Khairy’s political career. It is laughable that these people now support Abdullah’s ‘reforms’. They would support any Prime Minister in office for that matter. If Hadi Awang was the Prime Minister, they would be clapping like seals, yelping his name.

What worries all these people is that they can no longer pretend to be the loyal sons of Mahathir while serving as Abdullah’s men. Now that the battle has begun, they must be seen to be the undivided loyal soldiers of the current commander-in-chief. That is expected of them and has always been the UMNO culture. Nevertheless, at least three of them have given secret support to Mahathir. Let’s call a spade a spade so that life can be more interesting. The three who have called Mahathir to give their support are Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, Azmi Khalid and Mustapa Mohamad.

But this of course comes as no surprise. The surprise instead lies in Mahathir’s reaction and counter moves. Surely no one is stupid enough to think that Mahathir is having an off day, having swallowed too much Panadol when he gave that watershed comment. Like the Anwar episode, Mahathir had thought long and hard about it. And this is the next move Mahathir will make. Mahathir toppled Anwar by having other people bell the cat. This time, however, he will do it himself. He himself has told everyone as much. Even his son Mukhriz admitted to the press that his father was now so angry he is making his own moves and is not delegating that responsibility to others.

First of all though, a no-confidence movement within UMNO needs to emerge. Like in the past, Mahathir will rely on the state UMNO machineries to do this. Of the many Menteris Besar, only two remain in Abdullah’s camp. These are Mahadzir Khalid of Kedah and Mohamad Hassan of Negeri Sembilan. Mahadzir Khalid is a non-entity in Kedah. He is too new to have any strong grassroots support and has ready-made enemies such as Ahmad Lebai Sudin, Aziz Sheikh Fadzir and even former Menteri Besar Syed Razak Syed Zain to contend with. In addition, his extravagance over these last few months where he has become the only Menteri Besar to use a private jet for overseas visits has further riled up the UMNO leaders in Kedah. He also openly scolds them as if they were children -- perhaps reminiscent of the days when he used to scold his wife’s pupils during his time in the political wilderness. He is scarcely someone who could be relied upon to deliver the important state of Kedah.

Mohamad Hassan, the Menteri Besar of Negeri Sembilan who resembles a baddie from a bad 1970s Tamil movie, is another non-entity placed as a puppet by Khairy to warm the seat until he is ready to assume the political leadership of Negeri Sembilan. Mohamad has ready-made enemies in Isa Samad, the Menteri Besar he displaced, and other Exco Members with many more years experience compared to his. He knows as much about running the state as the next car mechanic you see in Seremban -- and throwing his support behind Abdullah is the only way he can keep his job.

Of course, there are those like Idris Jusoh of Terengganu and Musa Aman of Sabah who will support anyone they think will win -- and if they think Mahathir is going to win they will abandon Abdullah like a hot potato and jump on Mahathir’s bandwagon. Of the rest, two have already given veiled support to Mahathir -- Shahidan Kassim, the arch-opportunist, who believes himself to be God’s gift to arbitration, and Adnan Yaakob, who is still sore at Khairy for not backing his efforts to stand as a Vice President during the last UMNO elections. But these two are clowns. Mahathir is relying on someone else to be his campaign manager for the states. That man is someone who already has a long-standing grudge, not only against Abdullah, but against Khairy. During the last General Election he had been on the list of those to be removed. Furthermore, Khairy had belittled him in his efforts during the last UMNO elections. More importantly, Khairy has gone over his head in allocating projects in his state. There were times he had been told by businessmen that Khairy had personally given them certain concessions -- for which he is forbidden from protesting. His anger at Khairy has good reasons and the removal of Abdullah and his son-in-law would be the culmination of the ideal dream.

Mahathir will rely on this person to move UMNO slowly but surely towards removing Abdullah. By whatever means, UMNO will be made ready for a contest that will see either Abdullah in triumph over Mahathir or Mahathir’s new man in place at the leadership of Barisan Nasional before the 12th General Election. Since Mahathir is so ardent in his efforts to remove Abdullah and Khairy, Malaysia Today will not spoil it by revealing his plans just yet. Suffice that we call Mahathir’s weapon ‘MB X’. And MB X will make himself known to the public soon enough....