The Umno boys tell me Najib is going to be ousted very soon, maybe even in May itself. I am not so sure about that. Dr Mahathir can tell you it is not that easy to oust a Prime Minister. And Dr Mahathir of all people should know. So the Prime Minister has to be made to resign and to do this you need to harass and hassle him and give him sleepless nights.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
The First Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, resigned from office. He resigned because he was sad. And he was sad, according to what he told K Das, was because ‘they’ triggered May 13 just to oust him from office.
Malaysians need not have died, said the very perturbed Tunku with tears running down his cheeks. All they needed to do was to ask me to go and I would have stepped down. And with that the interview had to be stopped because Tunku was too emotional to continue.
But then ‘they’ probably thought he would not resign if politely asked to go so they had to use pressure to make him resign. And that ‘pressure’ cost many lives. The architects thought they could control the ‘fire’. They never suspected the fire would burn out of control.
The Second Prime Minister, Tun Razak Hussein, was fortunate. He was fortunate because he died in office. So he is remembered for all the good things. If he had not died then he would also have eventually been ousted by the Young Turks. Then he would have had to leave under a dark cloud.
The Third Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn, also suffered the same fate as the First Prime Minister. He also felt hurt by what ‘they’ were doing to him so he decided to resign. This was not a man who would take insults. Malays call it hidung tak mancung, pipi tersorong-sorong. In short, if I am not welcome then sayonara.
Hussein was a military man and someone known for his no-nonsense and attention to fine detail. He was so detailed he would correct memos and send them back to the writer to be redone correctly, or so his aids say. He would mark documents in blue, red, green, etc., as he read through them, the colours denoting the importance or priority of each point or sentence.
Then we come to the famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, Fourth Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He refused to resign in 1987 and again in 1998 even when the whole country was against him.
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah once called Dr Mahathir a beruk. And Tengku Razaleigh asked the crowd whether they know why he called Dr Mahathir a beruk.
A beruk, said, Tengku Razaleigh would grip the coconut tree when it is storming and the stronger the storm the stronger it would grip the tree. The beruk would never fall. But when it is calm and sunny and there is no storm, the beruk would suddenly fall all by itself.
Tengku Razaleigh was proven right when in mid-2002 Dr Mahathir announced his resignation. There was no storm and no one was pressuring him to go. But he resigned anyway, much to everyone’s surprise, his own family included.
Then we had the Fifth Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He, too, resigned under pressure. And the person who pressured him was no other than the same man who pressured two Prime Ministers before this to resign, and which probably would have been three if Tun Razak had not died in office a bit too early.
So now we come to the Sixth Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak. Will Najib resign like four Prime Ministers before him or die in office like his father? No, he will not resign. And I suspect, unless he has a heart problem or cancer, which he is not telling us about, he is going to most likely not die in office.
Dr Mahathir stayed 22 years. Najib has so far been around for only six years. So he has 16 more years until 2031 before he will call it a day. If I am still alive at that time I would be around 80 years old or so. Then Najib can retire as Prime Minister and I retire from Blogging and spend time with my great-grandchildren.
Now the battle lines are very clear. We know who from within Umno is with him and who is not. And those not with him include the Deputy Prime Minister and two of the three Umno Vice Presidents.
The Umno boys tell me Najib is going to be ousted very soon, maybe even in May itself. I am not so sure about that. Dr Mahathir can tell you it is not that easy to oust a Prime Minister. And Dr Mahathir of all people should know. So the Prime Minister has to be made to resign and to do this you need to harass and hassle him and give him sleepless nights.
And that is what they are trying to do. They are raising one issue after another in the hope that Najib will say, “Fook it! Who needs this?” and throw in the towel. But Najib is not going to do that. He is going to fight back. He intends to stay and leave only when he is ready to leave.
But to do that Najib needs to get rid of the many Brutus standing behind him with daggers drawn. He needs to get rid of the people who are not with him and replace them with those who will show loyalty. So he needs a new Deputy Prime Minister. And the new Deputy must come from one of the three Umno Vice Presidents.
But it cannot be Shafie Apdal. That man from Sabah has a dagger in his hand with Najib’s name embossed on it. It also cannot be Hishammuddin Hussein because talk amongst Umno circles is that this may trigger the same problem that Anwar Ibrahim faced. Then, through process of elimination, it can only be Zahid Hamidi.
Najib needs someone to cover his back. And that man will have to be Zahid. Muhyiddin, Shafie and Hisham would be like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Najib can either take action to protect his flank and rear or become yet another Prime Minister who serves only six years.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.