On the arrest of TMI editors – Nawawi Mohamad

In the interest of national security, Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi would not hesitate to get the help of even the underworld, like Paul Phua the gambling kingpin.

But it seems that he would not care much in taking care of the sanctity of the royals in our country and left it to the Royal Malaysian Police to make their own judgment.

However, knowing the police work for their boss, surely they must have received the instruction from the top to arrest the editors of The Malaysian Insider, as Zahid has denied that he had anything to do with the arrest.

Why all of a sudden someone in power would now care for the royals when it was Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then Umno president who stripped the immunity of the sultans?

Nobody in Umno complained then, yet when TMI published something related to the royals, which didn’t mean anything to the home minister as something serious, that police had to take action, means that someone at the top found it so detrimental to the country?

Who else would the police respond to besides the home minister if not the prime minister? If so, there are several implications. Zahid could have disobeyed Datuk Seri Najib Razak in not taking action against the TMI editors, thus Zahid has not been grateful to Najib who had absolved him of any wrong doing in his writing the letter in support of Paul Phua to the Deputy Director of the FBI.

Najib could be trying to get the support of the royals to stay in power after the relentless attacks against him, thus he shows his concern and takes care of the integrity of the royals.

The Council of Rulers could have just issued a press statement to deny whatever was published by TMI and the case would be closed, yet Najib may have found that there was a need to take some serious action just for show. After all, the editors have been released.

In any case, besides the “sandiwara” to please the royals, the arrest of the editors was indeed very serious to Najib, and Zahid disobeyed him. Zahid could be in trouble for his disobedience, but that is another story.

See, TMI has been very critical of Najib and this is the opportunity to give some sort of stern warning for them to be more careful.

But Najib could also be getting nervous and feeling the heat now because of the attacks, the 1MDB scandal, the wasteful flower theme of his daughter’s wedding which despite the ban, people have seen those flowers via social media, the expensive jet for his wife’s use paid for by the people, and of course the GST.

The majority of the people hate the GST and the business community is not fully helping in collecting the GST from the consumers by using some simple transactions to avoid the GST benefiting both the traders and consumers. After all with more money from the GST Najib would be wasting more money!

Najib knows that the people hate him. Najib must have read all the comments on Facebook and other pro-Umno, pro-government social media accounts and portals. The comments are harsh, crude, point-blank and vulgar; the people are truly very angry.

Indeed something has struck Najib’s nerves and he is getting edgy.

* Nawawi Mohamad reads The Malaysian Insider.