A way to surmount Dr M's credibility gap?

After the combined 'oust PM Najib Razak' forces began their campaign with a roar last Friday at the launch of the Citizens' Declaration, has their momentum slowed in the week after?

The fact that both the pro-Najib battalions and the oppositionists who are loath to have any truck with former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad have rounded-in on the same target does say something about the prospects of the whole effort of deposition of the incumbent PM.

The Najib defenders have zeroed in on the supposed treachery of Dr M in banding together with Umno's long-time foes, while the 'don't-touch-Dr M-with-a-barge-pole' crowd just cannot abide the idea that the person who allegedly- no, most certainly - set the stage upon which Najib presently struts could plausibly lead any attempt to undo his handiwork.

In short, Dr M has a credibility problem but don't expect him to admit it; as well expect that water can flow uphill.

Ex-deputy prime minister Musa Hitam's reading of him is right: to Mahathir, any admission of error is a sign of weakness which must be avoided at all cost.

It's assumed that all those who converged to support the Citizens’ Declaration last week view the removal of Najib rather like Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang saw the invading Japanese imperialists in the 1930s - as a bigger threat to China's future requiring for their repulsion collaboration with an odious internal foe, the communists under Mao Tze Tung.

This reading is incontestably true, which rests on the premise that Najib's continuance in office will gnaw at the innards of this country more corrosively that Mahathir's 22-year premiership did.

All the indices of national well-being are down and Najib can only maintain his hold on power through measures that would exert more downward pressure on those gauges.

Moreover, he is unlikely to enjoy the good fortune that Mahathir had when at a similarly depressed point in the arc of prime ministerial fortune in 1988, a wise lifting of limitations on foreign equity combined with a surging stock market to set the country on the path of vibrant growth.

The force of that trajectory was strong enough to wipe out the effects of a parliamentary by-election defeat inflicted on BN in Johor Baru in August 1988, a result attributed to public displeasure at the authoritarian streak Mahathir was evincing at that time.

Shahrir Samad's victory in the by-election after quitting his seat in protest against Mahathir's despotic ways did not turn out to be the harbinger for the incumbent PM it was taken to be at the time.

Economic conditions then and now

The world's and the Malaysian economy's vibrancy combined to prevent doubts about Mahathir's rule - qualms sustained by Shahrir's protest poll victory from festering.

Economic conditions the reverse of what obtained then hold sway now. Global economic conditions are poor and the domestic variant is scarcely better.

This makes a by-election, forced perhaps by Mukhriz Mahathir in his state seat of Jerlun in Kedah, as both an opportunity and a gauge.

It's an opportunity because it will test the cohesiveness of the seemingly incongruent forces that assembled to endorse the Citizens’ Declaration aimed at deposing Najib.

The by-election would also be a gauge of public sentiment for or against the declaration.

One of the weaknesses the pro-Najib forces cite about the assemblage of forces for the declaration, is the willingness of Dr M to join hands with DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang - who has long been painted as an anti-Malay ogre.

Mahathir cannot wash his hands of responsibility for foisting that image of Lim on the Malay - especially rural - masses.

Lim has consistently rejected this charge. The sight of him campaiging for Mukhriz in a by-election in Jerlun would go some way towards exposing the image as myth.

We now know that Mukhriz's replacement as Kedah menteri besar, Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah, is not popular from the serial booing he received from Kedah football fans at a match last week in Alor Setar.

A by-election with Mukhriz as contestant would exploit this uncertainty about Bashah's standing in Kedah politics.

In a little over two months, amendments promulgated under Mahathir to election laws would prevent an incumbent's resignation from issuing in a by-election, more evidence (if that be needed) of how restrictive Mahathir's long premiership was.

So, a resignation of an incumbent state or parliamentary legislator must take place soon to force a by-election that will test the cohesiveness and viability of the motley assembly of forces ranged against the PM.

A Mukhriz resignation would be the more suitable as it would be easier, in the circumstance, to rally the Citizens’ Declaration forces behind it.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.

-Mkini