'WEAKLINGS' JOIN FORCES IN UMNO: Dr M the perfect scapegoat for Pak Lah, Najib

KUALA LUMPUR - Umno has always been a murky party, some say downright dirty and full of political backstabbing. It is now headed for possibly its most pivotal-ever party election, where chances are high a completely unexpected and 'new' guard might sweep to power.

To outsiders, the fight in Umno is basically between the party's 'liberals' and its 'hardline conservatives'. The question though is, who are the liberals and who are the conservatives?.

This is why Umno politics has often been described as being "dirty" because the players themselves hardly dare to show their faces and which side of the fence they really belong to. Loyalties can switch at a moment's notice, loyalties can bought easily if not cheaply.

Straddling two 'sampans' (boats)

Take for instance, Prime Minister Najib Razak who is also the Umno president - is he a liberal or a hawk? Perhaps, even Najib himself doesn't know.

His supporters claim he is held back by the 'evil' Dr Mahathir (Mohamad, the former premier) when speaking to the urban Malays and to the non-Malays.

But when they are in the Felda settlements and rural Malay 'hot spots', Najib's aides are quick to assure that there is "no need for Dr M", Najib himself will stand guard against advances of the cunning Chinese and stand firm against the endless piteous clamoring of the Indians. He will ensure the Malays get everything or everything that matters anyway.

In other words, Najib is Malay supremacy and Malay supremacy is Najib. Look at his dad, Abdul Razak, the country's second prime minister who had spearheaded the racially-slanted New Economic Policy in 1971 and see how the son - a chip of the old block - had ordered the most brutal police beatings against the BERSIH demonstrators for free and fair polls in 2011 and 2012.

This then is the Najib camp's two-faced pitch. And while it may seem to work, the gains are only short-term as the real problems faced by Malaysia are only being swept under the rug, left irresponsibly to foment until a dangerous breaking point is hit.

So it is that with just weeks to go to the October 5 Umno polls, no one knows if Najib is pro-Mahathir or if Mahathir is pro-Najib. Both men have their own Plan A, B and C.

Badawi returns - but what is he after?

Enter another former prime minister and Umno president into the scene - Abdullah Badawi or Pak Lah.

This sleeping beauty is suddenly breaking his silence. Yes, Pak Lah did literally fall asleep on the job on many occasions although some critics have alleged he did stay awake long enough to salt away some RM11 billion of the country's wealth.

In his book that is due to hit the stands later this month, Pak Lah's salvos are clearly directed at Mahathir, while offering an olive branch to Najib although Najib was one of the main players who together with Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin had ousted Pak Lah from the top post in 2009. Of course, Mahathir was the main engineer behind the Pak Lah ouster but the 88-year old doesn't seem to have forgiven his old deputy.

So is Pak Lah now taking political revenge?

Is he preparing to strike a pact with Najib to take on any challenge initiated by the Mahathir camp? Does Pak Lah really believe that he and Najib have more in common because they share the same reform 'zeal' ? Certainly, this is what some of the media aligned to the two men are trying to suggest.

Dr M the perfect scapegoat

It may be true that both men are trying to explore some sort of common platform. Of course, it could also be that their media are trying to pull a quick one by using Pak Lah's comments to frighten Mahathir into fully endorsing Najib

Whichever, what really needs to be questioned is the reform quality of both Pak Lah and Najib. Are they really serious or sincere? If Mahathir was not around, would they really stop Umno's divide-and-rule policies or would they launch their own variation of the same old themes.

Given the weak track records chalked by Pak Lah and Najib, any coming together would be due more to political expediency than to any high moral agenda to reclaim Malaysia or Umno from the clutches of a megalomaniac Mahathir and his hawkish, racist allies such as the Perkasa faction in Umno.

In Pak Lah's new book Awakening: The Abdullah Badawi Years In Malaysia, he makes sure he draws a very clear line as to what he had intended to achieve when he was PM, and how it was Mahathir who prevented him from carrying out his ideas.

This, Pak Lah kindly offers, is also the difficulty that Najib faces.

"Najib is trying to do many good things. But he faces the same problem I did – resistance. Unfortunately, there are still people in Umno and Barisan Nasional who refuse to accept we did badly in 2008 because we did not meet the people's expectations in carrying out reforms.

“They think that we did not do well because we allowed too much discourse and openness to the people and the opposition. And it is these people who are set in doing things the old way. This, I believe, is Najib's biggest challenge."

Pak Lah also says that with hindsight, he should have pushed through his reforms rather allow the hardliners to stop him.

"I underestimated the resistance to the changes and reforms that I wanted to implement. Perhaps, on hindsight, I would be more forceful in making those changes and less accommodating of those who resisted these changes. But that's water under the bridge now," Pak Lah said in the book, which contains essays by Malaysians and foreigners on his rather lacklustre one term in office.

Feared police reaction to IPCMC - how then to reform the whole country

However, critics don't quite "buy it".

"Put it this way. When there is a will, there is a way. It is easy to use Mahathir as the bogeyman and the source of all that has gone wrong in Umno and the country. Mahathir did rule Malaysia for 22 years, that's a very long time and it is not easy at all to dismantle the 'infrastructure' he built into the government, the institutions, civil service and the political system to safeguard his own power," an Umno watcher told Malaysia Chronicle.

"But the job of PM in Malaysia is one of most powerful in the world. Whoever is PM here wields enormous authority, there is almost no check and balance on the PM here. This too is Mahathir's legacy. So Pak Lah and Najib have no excuses for failing to show the leadership expected of them by the people. The truth is Pak Lah and Najib also had their own 'evil' agenda to play. They too tried to divide-and-rule. Can either of them dare to say they are not corrupt?"

This piece of criticism seems borne out by Pak Lah's own admission on why he did not hammer through the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission, which experts have claimed was critical to reform the police force and to help reduce crime in the country.

"On one occasion, the Inspector-General of Police himself made a statement on Police Day – in my presence – opposing the report. Feelings were running high and to be very frank, if we had tried to push it through, we were going to have problems with the police," said Pak Lah.

"Well, of course. But let's accept the reality. You can have ideals but you cannot pursue these ideals by not engaging reality," he added, when asked wasn't it a dangerous thing for a civilian government to be beholden to the police.

Chilling reminder: Men who waver

Looking at his answer, Pak Lah basically 'feared' the police or the reaction from the police. His use of the phrase "let's accept the reality" is another  chilling reminder to Malaysians of his compromising attitude.

Critics warn whether it was Pak Lah or Najib at the helm of Umno, the future will not be bright for Malaysia.

Mahathir was lucky, he got away because the turbulent 1980s and 90s was an era of breakout growth and development for the region and the world. Landmark economic developments took place such as the liberalization of market rules and the emergence of China's economic powerhouse.

Malaysia, like the rest of Southeast Asia, was still far behind in the education and knowledge curve. The Internet was still preparing to be unleashed. Most citizens feared to speak up and preferred to be led by their governments rather than to lead their governments. With such public docility, it was not surprisingly there was major breach of trust and a lot of the cheating and corruption that went on was clearly CBT in nature.

It is worth noting that in his last weeks in office, Pak Lah had tabled a tepid Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Bill that did not give the anti-graft agency the powers to prosecute. This, critics had slammed, was a really glaring stumbling block as it failed to block the mass of loopholes used by offenders and their high-level government contacts to hide in. In other words, there was no real reform at all and corruption was allowed to carry on unheeded.

"Badawi is a man who wavers, who flip flops. While he was PM, he was also known as Mr Flip Flop," Opposition politician Chua Jui Meng, a vice president at the PKR party, told Malaysia Chronicle.

"When Najib took over,he was slammed for being even more flip-flop than Badawi. But both men are kinder in their approach than Mahathir so they may appear to be more acceptable to today's generation of voters. I think they are and I agree Mahathir is probably the worst option for the country now. But this isn't to say racism, religious bigotry and corruption won't be used by Umno to divide and rule Malaysia if Badawi's camp or Najib's camp are in power - not at all."