'Mindless' Mukhriz trots out dad's old 'foreign power' theories against Anwar, Pakatan

Deputy Trade Minister Mukhriz Mahathir came under heavy fire after he bizarrely told the Umno congress that Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Rakyat coalition were working with "foreign powers" to stage a Malaysian Spring.

"Mukhriz is raving unbecoming for a deputy minister. He seems to be following his father's penchant to conjure up ridiculous and non-existent conspiracies. He produces not one iota of evidence to prove his slander against Pakatan," PKR vice president N Surendran told Malaysia Chronicle.

"Like his father, he is a bare-faced liar. In fact, his party Umno is a menace to the freedom of all Malaysians and is robbing the country of its resources through corruption and cronyism. Umno is like a cancer debilitating and slowly killing this nation. They must be stopped."

Pale shadow

Calling Anwar "desperate", Mukhriz accused the opposition of using street protests to conspire against the BN. As Surendran said, Mukhriz offered no proof, but that did not the stop him from calling the Pakatan a "new tool" of unnamed foreign powers.

"Whether you realize it or not, the opposition is the new tool of the foreign powers. The opposition gets a lot of funding and lots more of other support to attain their objective of what they have coined as regime change. Question I am asking is, are we going to allow the new era of colonization to happen here?” Mukhriz told the delegates attending the congress on Thursday.

But there was no hushed or awed response. Umno members and Malaysians have heard this line once too often before. Mahathir used to label whoever was in his bad books as being in cohorts with either the United States or Israel or both.

For Mukhriz, a pale shadow of his authoritarian and Machiavellian father, to pipe the same tune thus came as no surprise. It only confirmed the view of the many who hold him in contempt that he was nothing without his dad.

"He has no mind of his own or new ideas how to take Umno forward. He can only borrow from his father and there is talk his father wants to push out Najib in favor of Muhyiddin (Yassin, the deputy Umno president) so that Mukhriz can move closer to the PM's chair," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.

"This the sad future that awaits Umno members, they will never be able to get a new leader of calibre. No new blood that can lead the party forward. Only worn out old shoes who will bully and intimidate their way through."

Preening himself for the Youth chief post?

Mukhriz had in the 2009 Umno internal polls lost the Youth chief post to arch rival Khairy Jamaluddin. Despite his failure to garner support, Mukhriz was made a deputy minister while Khairy was cold-benched for having stepped on too many toes in Umno including Mahathir's when his father-in-law Abdullah Badawi was prime minister.

It is clear that Khairy will be shown the door, with Muhyiddin himself saying that the Umno Youth wing had underperformed and was not as active previous batches.

Whether Khairy chooses to defend his post or read the writing on the wall and step aside, it is quite certain Mukhriz will go for it.

And this time, with Mahathir having strengthened his hand on Umno - thanks largely to a weak Najib - his son looks likely to win. And this would be another a sad day for Umno, which has already had too many sad days.

Malaysia Chronicle