Azmin Ali: Man of mystery

The Selangor Menteri Besar seems caught up in a web of intrigue.

COMMENT

Gather round, ladies and gents all. For this be not news your town cryer may shout on the streets, but some dealings in conspiracies, the stuff of night and shadows.

Now, what secrets could Azmin Ali, PKR stalwart, Menteri Besar of Selangor, Anwar Ibrahim’s closest confidante, be keeping? As he is a politician, we must assume that Azmin has some skeletons in the closet. However, one alleged meeting in particular has caught the curiosity of political observers, even though not much about it has been said in the media. We are, of course, referring to the alleged meeting between him and Mahathir Mohamad in London recently.

The first whispers of this arrived on the website of one Raja Petra, who was the one who supposedly arranged the meeting between Malaysia’s longest serving Prime Minister and it’s newest Menteri Besar. Raja Petra is understandably somewhat salty about the idea that he had anything to do with the meeting, asking why anyone would imagine that the “no longer relevant” Raja Petra would be needed to set up such a meeting when Mahathir and Azmin would have direct access to one another.

RPK, as he is fondly known, is hesitant to say that Azmin and Mahathir did indeed meet, though he does make references to the well-documented pictures taken of Azmin and Mahathir together in a different time in their political careers. In fact, as recently as 2011, one can find numerous references to an Azmin-Mahathir alliance, including claims on some blogs of Mahathir seeing Azmin as Prime Minister material. Given that there is no concrete proof Azmin and Mahathir met (although pictures have allegedly popped up on some blogs), we cannot accuse the Selangor head honcho of colluding with Anwar’s greatest enemy.

However, RPK is right in that the burden of proof lies on the accused here in Malaysia, and following that train of thought, Azmin must end his silence and address the issue directly. Silence merely invites speculation, and despite Azmin’s current positive stock for announcing that the KIDEX project would not be approved, public opinion can be swayed by speculation, no matter how unsubstantiated. RPK theorizes that these rumours are being used to bring down Azmin, much like the way some observers have noted Azmin contributed to the downfall of Khalid Ibrahim.

It is something quite like false equivalence on RPK’s part to compare the talk of Hadi Awang meeting Umno power brokers to Azmin meeting Mahathir, but nonetheless he is right in that such talk could result in the rakyat looking at Azmin with a slight sneer, the same way Hadi is disdained all over social media and in the comments section of news portals.

Azmin must come forward and set the record straight. Did he or did he not meet Mahathir in London? If so, what was discussed? Personally, I would find it hard to believe that Mahathir was brokering a position in Umno for Azmin. But letting the speculation run wild is sometimes more destructive than revealing the truth, and with the conspicuous absence of Azmin or his cohorts at Anwar’s nightly vigils at the Sungai Buloh prison, suspicion is bound to be high even within PKR.

Azmin, come clean. Secrets are wonderful things indeed – double-edged swords that are eager to bite the hands that wields them, and for someone still very much in the early days of Menteri Besarship, in the turmoil following the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim, honesty gains more stock than intrigue.