Harapan meltdown – What did Mahathir know and when did he know it?

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

– Robert F Kennedy

From having, a transition date shoved down your throat to having the person who wants to replace you “pleading” for you to stay on is a miraculous turn of events. 

Interim Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad now has to deal with the fact that Umno and PAS have withdrawn their support and are demanding snap elections. 

Bersatu can't be trusted and DAP, PKR and Amanah are supporting Mahathir, which basically means the Malay über alles crowd is going to town with this if there is a snap election.

A Kadir Jasin – a pro-tem member of the media council – says that Mahathir pleaded with Bersatu people to “not to force him to abandon his principle and renege on his promise (to hand over power to Anwar Ibrahim after the November Apec Summit)”.

Which is really strange, because if Mahathir’s principle was to hand over the keys of the kingdom to Anwar, then why is his party, in which his son is a vice-president, think that reneging on Anwar is something that would find favour with the chairperson of Bersatu? Surely they would know how important principles are to the old maverick, right?

Prime minister in perpetual waiting Anwar Ibrahim said he begged the old maverick not to resign and was reassured that Mahathir was not behind these moves to create a new government.

Your belief in this statement depends on whether you believe that Mahathir has done everything to reassure the Harapan base that he wants Anwar to be prime minister and to stick to the reform agenda.

Political operatives say the most incredulous things, especially when they have no supporting arguments. 

When questioned about whether he was aware of Najib Abdul Razak's corruption when he campaigned for Najib, Mahathir said: “No, I wasn’t. I get reports about corruption all the time. When I ask them, please give me some evidence, nobody can give me any evidence. All they can say is 'we heard', 'these are rumours' and all that.” 

This was after it became apparent that Najib was not going to toe the line when it came to what the old maverick wanted.

Are we seriously to believe that Azmin’s treacherous actions happened in a vacuum? When it was apparent to everyone that the Anwar/Azmin feud was causing incredible damage to Harapan? PKR communications director Fahmi Fadzil said this when he dismissed the idea that there were two camps in PKR.

"That is something portrayed by the media. I understand that there could be a perception of such, but the reality is, there are no camps. What we have now is Parti Keadilan Rakyat that is strong and united," Fahmi said. Yeah, how is that working out for Harapan?

Harapan partisans are supposed to believe that while Azmin Ali was making his plans, the prime minister of this country was in the dark, or worse, not telling anyone about it? 

Was the prime minister, whose party comprises the old warhorses of the previous regimes who have engaged in the kind of political chicanery that Azmin is mimicking, also in the dark and were manipulated by Azmin Ali, a political operative dumb enough to get embroiled in a sex tape scandal? That Mahathir’s top lieutenants had no idea that a nemesis of Anwar was planning to take a shot at his leader?

Never mind the fact that Azmin (above) was a known supporter of Mahathir – "thank God it’s over " – and whose lieutenants have found favour in the Mahathir regime.

Your main cheerleader in a party that your successor leads is plotting to bring down the government and you don’t know about it or even suspect? Nobody close to the prime minister and now, leaking to the press the narrative that Mahathir did not know anything, was unaware of the plot by Azmin to cause this meltdown?

Remember what Rais Yatim said during the lead up to the transition talks: “By saying November 2020 seems not good enough to other PH prefects. Something may happen before November. The prefects may not know what hit them then. There're other powers and factors at work.”

I think Rais should have added – just for plausible deniability – that “even our president does not know about these factors and powers”.

Go back to what Tengku Razaliegh Hamzah said when dismissing the chance of the opposition gaining power, especially the part of how the state security apparatus is used for political purposes: “(Bagaimanapun) jangan memandang rendah kepada kerajaan kerana mereka ada kuasa, ada televisyen, radio, duit dan media. Mereka juga ada alat-alat risikan dan sebagainya. Media dia lebih tahu pada kita. Dia tahu kita belum tahu lagi. Sama ada dengan kekuasaan itu, parti yang berkuasa akan kalah saya tidak tahu.”

(Don't look down on the government. They have control over television, radio, money and the media. They also have espionage and spying equipment. They know the media better than us. They know that we don't know yet. However, with the power they have, I am not sure if the party in control will lose.) 

Is it plausible that nobody told the old maverick that treachery was afoot? The state security apparatus – which has been implicated in the disappearance of Pastor Koh, which the old maverick dismiss as hearsay – the sycophants within PKR, the assortment of business interests funding Azmin Ali, the various cretins who slither around Harapan aligned to Tun, the media people who are in actuality emissaries from the old maverick, and various political operatives in Harapan who always seek his favour: none of these people informed the prime minister or knew what Azmin was planning?

Add to the list political operatives from the DAP and Amanah who apparently knew nothing of Azmin’s plot, bureaucrats who apparently serve the deep state but at the same time support Mahathir – go figure – staff of the royal households who act as the eyes and ears for the political apparatus, retired servicemen aligned with Mahathir and Bersatu, none of these people alerted the old maverick of a plot to destabilise Harapan or knew anything about Azmin’s treachery?

Are we to believe that Azmin was operating so stealthily that nobody knew of his moves, even those who were quick to jump on the bandwagon? 

Are we are supposed to believe that Bersatu, which at the first opportunity left Harapan and hooked up with other Malay power structures, did all of this on the whispering of Azmin Ali? 

Muhkriz Mahathir (above), who is the vice-president of Bersatu and who was shafted by the Najib regime, took the words of Azmin Ali as gospel without consulting his father, the president of the party?

Mahathir resigns from Bersatu, but in a blink of an eye the party rejects his resignation. Does anyone seriously think that Mahathir’s son will remain in a party which his father had disavowed? Does this make sense? Bersatu leaves Harapan but pledges support for Mahathir?

I have heard of plausible deniability but this is ridiculous. All these moves made in support of Mahathir and he does not know anything about it? I get that you could be ignorant of moves made against you or be in denial – but to claim ignorance for moves which make you the big cheese of a new coalition, a Malay majority coalition which you always claimed was what made Umno strong, that’s a different story.

If Mahathir from day one had said that he backed Anwar instead of his qualified statements, do you think all this would have happened? How could Azmin, a political operative who had to rely on the state to bail him out from a sex scandal, suddenly become the mastermind of the fall of Harapan?

You could argue that Mahathir did not know anything about it at all, which would make him the most oblivious prime minister this country ever had and aided by the most inept political operatives, not to mention the intelligence apparatus. 

Now, the fascist elements are realigning and Harapan may have to go into battle with a coalition that any right-thinking person would not trust.

We get the government we deserve.

---

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of Persatuan Patriot Kebangsaan. - Mkini