Team B’s betrayer has morphed into Team A’s nightmare

“He is proving to be a very good Dr Mahathir student,” says Umno stalwart Musa Hitam of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

It will be interesting to see how Najib’s ‘Goebbels’ - Salleh Said Keruak - will respond to this description of his boss by a man who unlike Najib’s chief tormentor, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has been until recently more supporter than critic of the Umno president.

Communication and Multimedia Minister Salleh has been as quick and combative as a mongoose when faced with predators: Salleh is apt to strike back at Najib’s detractors in less than a day of receipt of a salvo aimed at his boss - from Mahathir or any other quarter.

Salleh will find Musa’s description of Najib as a “very good Dr Mahathir student” somewhat awkward to field because the tenor of his rebuttals of Mahathir’s salvos has been of the “Anything Najib has done Mahathir has done worse” variety.

In effect, Salleh is saying that Najib may be tsar but Mahathir was always Rasputin.

Musa’s jibe that Najib is turning out to be a “very good Dr Mahathir student” comes at its target obliquely which makes Salleh’s penchant for distinguishing between shades difficult to bring off in this instance.

Moreover, the vibes from Musa for Najib have been good until now; this despite what Najib did in the crucial Umno election of April 1987.

In an eleventh-hour move, Najib, who was a Team B sympathiser, swung his and supporters’ votes to Team A which was led by the then-Umno president Mahathir.

Musa, fighting to retain the deputy presidency of Umno, was in Team B which was headed by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

Both Team A and B were in a neck-and-neck battle battle, with Mahathir’s side triumphing by a wafer-thin majority.

Mahathir’s descent into authoritarian rule began with that narrow victory. A surging economy helped diffuse the damaging effects of his centralisation of power in the hands of the Umno president and prime minister.

In a way, Najib, who began as pro-Team B and then switched to Team A, made Mahathir’s authoritarian spell possible. Now the facilitator has turned executioner.

To entice Najib into switching, Anwar Ibrahim, the Umno Youth chief who was going for one of three vice-president slots in the 1987 party polls, handed the youth wing’s presidency to deputy Najib.

Najib’s schooling in the arts of privileging political opportunism over principle must have begun with that episode.

In saying that Najib has become a very good student of Mahathir, Musa was specifically referring what he said was Najib’s emulation of Mahathir’s stubborn refusal to admit mistakes because that was akin to the scent of blood to sharks: it provokes a feeding frenzy.

Musa said Mahathir felt that admitting error was a sign of weakness. To Musa, it was a mark of courage because truth-telling evokes strength to change and reform.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others. -Mkini