Najib fights a losing battle

In a war between Najib and Mahathir, there can only be one winner

COMMENT

It’s to be expected that even the famously quiet Najib Razak could take only so much abuse before striking back. When backed into a corner, even a mouse would try to attack a snake, and Najib has been driven so far back that his only options are to fight or to die. It’s clear now that Najib realizes he cannot continue without dealing with the roadblock that is former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has been criticizing his administration for its excesses, especially the controversial wealth fund, 1MDB.

It seems that Mahathir’s most recent blog post denouncing the 1MDB was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. The site went down due to what has been described as unusually high traffic. This sounds incredibly similar to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, a favourite tool of hacker collective Anonymous to render its target website unavailable for a period of time.

FMT received two letters critical of Mahathir right after the attack on Mahathir’s blog. With every intent to be fair, we published these letters as they represent the point of view of a certain segment of the populace, but it all seems rather serendipitous that two upstanding citizens decided to gather the courage to attack Mahathir at the same time that his website was attacked.

Now, coincidence has it’s place even in the cynical world of politics, but this seems all rather orchestrated, and we’re inclined to believe so until proven otherwise. This could be Najib’s attempt to fight back and keep his spot atop the mountain, knowing that if he remained passive, he would meet the same fate Abdullah Badawi did.

This is all well and good, of course. The men of power will play their little game while we watch with amusement. Till the premiere of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, there aren’t many blockbusters out there to amuse us right now, and thus this will have to do. However, try as he might to distract the public with letters from “readers” and DDOS attacks – if those are indeed from his camp, with or without his knowledge – Najib cannot run from the fact that there are answers being demanded of him. If he wants to retain any sort of credibility, he must provide those answers instead of hoping that the questions will go away eventually if he just keeps silent.

Mahathir Mohamad is no saint, and doubtless he would not confess to being one. His sins are many, and have been scoured over by analysts and politicians alike time and time again. To dig into his closet is a daunting task indeed, but any attempt to play his game is even more dispiriting. Mahathir is doubtless aware of the skeletons lurking in Najib’s past, and if he wants to play Najib’s game, he is more than capable.

Najib, enough with the games. You cannot win this war with underhanded attacks at Mahathir’s past, and you cannot do it by proxy. You can no longer afford to ignore the questions, as hard as they are, because now answers are not just demanded, they are needed. The numerous failures of this administration to fulfil the hopes and dreams of the rakyat must be accounted for, and an “elegant silence” is not going to help us make any strides forward.

The mouse had better rethink it’s approach before the snake bares its fangs. There is no force more dangerous than Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysian politics. No one has brought him down before, and now that he demands Najib’s accountability to the public, Najib had better hearken. It’s not just Mahathir who wants to know; nearly every Malaysian is wondering how he can survive with the GST and price hikes just around the corner. We want to know where Najib found the gall to play with our money at a time like this.

Najib, be the leader you were supposed to be. We have had enough of extravagance, we have had enough of grandstanding, we have had enough of secret plots (PKR, you are not excluded from this), and we have had enough of your silence. Like it or not, the people are demanding answers and they are doing so in the same voice that has been condemning Mahathir for his excesses.