With Shahrizat out of the way, a gleeful Raja Nong Chik counts his chickens

During the 2008 general election, Umno suffered a shock defeat in Lembah Pantai, where incumbent political heavyweight Shahrizat Jalil lost the seat to Nurul Izzah, then a PKR greenhorn.

To stem the fallout and loss of confidence from snaking down the division line, Raja Nong Chik, who heads Lembah Pantai Umno and Lembah Pantai BN was appointed a Senator and given the post of minister of Federal Territories.

But becoming a minister via a Senatorship and not through the ballot box has reduced Raja Nong Chik's stature in the eyes of the Lembah Pantai constituents, who are a pretty savvy lot although there are many low-income families also living there. Despite RNC's boasts and the amount of funds he has poured into the area to win the hearts and minds of residents, he has been fulfilling the aspirations of his boss, Prime Minister Najib Razak, rather than those of the people.

Najib's man

Raja Nong Chik or RNC as he prefers to be known owes his Cabinet post to Najib. Fearful that Shahrizat would again lose the seat to a very popular Nurul Izzah, Najib had given RNC the green light to try his best to shake Shahrizat out from the Umno queue of candidates wishful of being selected to contest Lembah Pantai.

Unfortunately, the RM250 million NFC financial debacle has exploded and is now out of control to the extent that Najib has been directly hit by his own indirect fire. Poetic justice or not, it looks like RNC had chosen the wrong issue with which to 'hang' Shahrizat. Yes, RNC was accused of being the original NFC 'deep throat' and is still among the lead suspects despite public denials of being involved.

Initially, it appears NFC was chosen because the national cattle breeding project awarded to Shahrizat's husband and children was badly managed and this was borne out by the 2010 Auditor-General's report which bluntly pointed to fundamental "weaknesses". It got out of hand when other of Najib's enemies in Umno caught on to it, and started to blow the whistle in earnest on the Shahrizat's alleged corruption.

So uncontrollable has the scandal become that the top question the public wants answered now is, did the NFC really buy a RM1.7million luxury apartment in Kazakhstan as a wedding gift for Najib's daughter? What a mess for the Najib camp if the speculation is true! Obviously, the PM has to backpedal quickly to deflect the blame from himself by assuring the public that more NFC directors, i.e. Shahrizat's children, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Salleh Ismail the NFC chairman.

Whether this will be good enough to stop Malaysians from questioning his own family's involvement in NFC is doubtful. Firstly, it is only rightful to prosecute both the parties offering as well as accepting a corrupt act. Secondly, if Najib is serious about fighting corruption, he should be the first to offer himself and family to public scrutiny over the matter.

Damage control

The next consequence of the perceived RNC-Najib bungle is that the Prime Minister has to drop RNC faster than a hot potato. This is harder said than done since almost everyone in Umno believes Najib handpicked RNC to replace Shahrizat and also gave him the FT ministry so that RNC would have funds to channel into and distribute around Lembah Pantai. For sure, Umno grassroots would be aghast at the type of political backbiting promoted by their own party president against another senior leader,Shahrizat, who is also the head of the Women's wing, and this could undermine Najib's already shaky credibility.

This may well be why Najib's advisers have been passing the word that the PM is furious with RNC, and that there is no connection at all between the two men. Desperate, the Najib camp is even spouting that whatever connection RNC may have is due to the association of his parents, grandparents and siblings with the previous regimes, not Najib's. Lame? Very much so, when one considers that no one put a gun to Najib's head to select RNC for the post. The PM himself chose RNC, surprising almost everyone in the process.

Even more farcical is the spin that Najib knows full well RNC stands the same chance as a snowball in hell of beating Nurul, the daughter of Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim. But despite the doubletalk that even the Washington Post has crowned Najib as being a champion of, Malaysians and Lembah Pantai residents will soon know the truth.

If Najib wanted to reprimand RNC for backstabbing Shahrizat and for stirring infighting in Umno, he should ask for RNC's resignation from the Cabinet so as to be even-handed in the matter. But on the contrary, despite all the attempts to distance himself from RNC plus the harsh words, which the latter has to swallow so that Najib can escape blame, RNC will still be named the Umno candidate for Lembah Pantai!

In a way, RNC is indeed the most winnable Umno candidate for Lembah Pantai, simply because of the huge amounts of funding he has poured into the area to win the favour of Umno branch chieftains there. But if RNC loses, Najib won't dare to re-appoint him FT minister or even Senator anymore.

Huge sums of money poured in to boost RNC's chances

Has RNC done enough to cement his chances of re-taking Lembah Pantai should GE-13 be held in May or June, as has been widely predicted? So far, RNC has focused almost all his efforts in the urban but still under-developed constituency. So insensitive is he to Shahrizat's feelings, that he has even begun hanging banners in the area showing his photo next to Najib's.

RNC has also been spending a disproportionate amount of ministerial allocations on Lembah Pantai, providing assistance of more than RM50,000 a week to "leaders and organizations close to Umno" as pointed out by PKR vice-president Tian Chua, who also accused him of abusing government resources for his political interests.

Fahmi Fadzil, political secretary to PKR Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar said that "If you go to his Facebook page, you will find that for every 30 programs he hosts, only one will be outside Lembah Pantai," The programs held by the minister in the constituency include Projek 1 Komputer 1 Murid, Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia, 1 Sumbangan 1 Keluarga, tuition centres and student loan (PTPTN) allocations.

Everything and more done to help him win Lembah Pantai

Najib has also given the green light to station civil servants especially from the Defense ministry in the area so as to increase the votes for BN, despite all the talk about snubbing RNC. If Umno wins the seat, RNC will be the man controlling and keeping an eye on all the developments in Kuala Lumpur. Obviously, RNC knows his chief task is to ensure Najib’s interests are secured.

So huge is the money allocated for developments in Kuala Lumpur, the total sum is already half that of the entire development budget. Some of the projects due to kick off include the 100-storey building, the Klang Valley MRT, the beautification of the Klang River, the Pudu Jail development and other commercial and residential projects.

All these goodies stand to come under RNC, with Shahrizat out of the way. But if he loses Lembah Pantai, after the NFC bungle and despite all the help Najib has extended to him, RNC can say goodbye to his Senatorship and Cabinet post. He can even go a several years-long slow cruise overseas as he will straightaway go back to being what he was before Najib made him the FT minister - just another obscure Umno member not enjoying much promotion or being noticed despite being in the party for 25 years.

Lembah Pantai was his golden goose to political stardom but Shahrizat's cows and condos may well have blown this out of reach for him.

Malaysia Chronicle