Shahbudin: Najib’s unpopularity at point of no return

The Najib administration is finished although the levers of powers, having been centralized, remain in the Prime Minister’s hands.

KUALA LUMPUR: It’s increasingly clear, said a political analyst and Najib Razak critic in his latest blog posting, that the Prime Minister has passed the point of no return in the popularity ranking and can no longer recover any significant degree of support from the people. “All the trends show that more and more people are proud that they no longer support the Prime Minister compared with the number who do.”

“This trend is likely to worsen with no indications that it can be reversed. Umno itself has been split down the middle with the majority of the 3 million members, and increasing all the time, rejecting Najib’s leadership.”

The bottomline, said Shahbudin Husin the analyst, is that matters have come to a head after months of media coverage on the various weaknesses of his administration, his lack of leadership skills, his lavish lifestyle and that of his family, and the two elephants in the room namely the 1MDB issue and the RM2.6 billion political donation controversy.

Shahbudin was analyzing a Straits Times Singapore report which cites a Merdeka Center survey as showing that an increasing number of Malays are rejecting Najib’s leadership while the number of Malaysians as a whole against the Prime Minister continues to increase. “Only 31 per cent of Malays still support Najib compared with 52 per cent in January,” noted the analyst in citing the survey results published by the Singapore paper. “The level of support nationwide for Najib has fallen to 23 per cent compared with 38 per cent in January.”

“Only 5 per cent of the Chinese support him compared with 11 per cent in January.”

There are also others indicators, added the analyst, like 78 per cent of the people disagreeing with the way the government was managing the economy. “The main worries among the people are the effects of the GST and the increasing cost of living, the decline of the ringgit and the lack of jobs for locals.”

“It can’t get any worse. The Najib administration is finished although the levers of powers, having been centralized, remain in the Prime Minister’s hands. He has become irrelevant and no one will henceforth pay him any attention. They are just waiting for him to go and go soon.”

It remains to be seen, said the analyst, whether the majority of Umno divisional chiefs will continue to support Najib when the stark reality is that the situation which is already at its worst is set to get even worse, and it can only turn around, if at all, by him going, again the sooner the better.

Najib’s defence is getting increasingly weak as evident in the wake of the recent statement on Sosma by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and six other top Barisan Nasional (BN) veterans, said Shahbudin. “There wasn’t much of an argument against the seven on Sosma and the only thing coming from the Najib side was a tame and lame blanket condemnation of the seven veterans.”

It cannot be ruled out, said the analyst, that as long as Najib can continue his Cash is King approach and dole out the goodies to a small band of sycophants around him, there will be people to defend him no matter what and come what may.