Kadir: New media strategy for Najib?

Kadir Jasin says the new approach could be a vicious one – kill the messengers if you can’t kill the message.

KUALA LUMPUR: Veteran journalist A Kadir Jasin suspects the Prime Minister’s Office has an entirely new communication strategy with the emergence of lone wolf Rizal Mansor.

“It could be possible, following the death of Jamaluddin Jarjis, to whom the media people reported on business matters,” he says in his latest blog posting. “The strategy could be a vicious one to protect Najib – kill the messengers if you can’t kill the message.”

Kadir makes the speculation in the context of Rizal’s recent attack against him and the blogosphere.

The Tabung Haji fiasco, adds the former Group Editor in Chief of the New Straits Times Group, shows that Najib Abdul Razak has lost confidence in the ability of the mainstream media to convince the people.

“Defending the Prime Minister could get harder,” he says. “That may be one reason that the task has been left in the hands of Rizal, an unknown.”

He notes that recent articles in defence of 1MDB or to attack its critics have been penned under pseudonyms. “Their targets have widened to include Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and other Umno leaders who are seen as no longer supporting Najib.”

He poses the following questions:

• “Why, out of the blue, has Rizal become the Prime Minister’s gallant Don Quixote? Where are the Prime Minister’s many press secretaries, media advisers and communication consultants? Where is the National Communication Team (NCT) and the Mat Salleh-led think tank? Why didn’t they come to the Prime Minister’s defence?
• “Or, have they come to admit that the task of defending the Prime Minister and promoting him as a ‘transformer’ has become so monumentally impossible that even their collective brilliance and intellectual prowess are of no help?”

Kadir says those who have now gone silent are better known to the public than Rizal. “Naturally, they are in a better position to argue with us and convince the public,” he said. “Also, that’s what they are paid for.

“Perhaps, they are not any better (than Rizal) as a recent New York Times article shows. Telling the NYT that Najib was wealthy because of his family legacy was not exactly a clever or truthful thing to say.”

If not for the cyber community, says Kadir, Najib would not have responded so quickly to direct Tabung Haji to sell the land it acquired from the scandal-ridden 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

“Despite his brave posturing, he was intimidated by the cyber community,” he says.

“All of us who are cybersurfers can raise our hands to the heavens and thank the Almighty that we now have this tool called the Internet. Through it, we are able to know what the mainstream media do not want us to know and say what they would not publish even if we write to them.

“When they don’t even entertain former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, why should they bother about us, nobodies and has-beens?”

Referring to Najib’s recent declaration that he would not quit, Kadir says, “All past leaders shown the door by their people said the same thing. Saying otherwise would mean a quick end to their careers.

“The ultimate test for him will be GE14 in 2017 or early 2018 even if he manages to get the Umno elections in 2016 postponed or to prevent anyone from challenging him.”