THE 16 HOURS THAT MAHATHIR REFUSED TO SPEAK TO MUHYIDDIN

The Third Force

For all the talk of Tun Dr. Mahathir’s political acumen, the man has yet to name his successor in the event Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak steps down as Prime Minister (PM). Now, isn’t it weird, that a man who is trying so desperately to depose of a current PM has yet to announce his choice successor?

Well, none of that matters anymore.

Last Friday, the fractured ex-premier was shattered into 42 billion pieces when UMNO’s highest decision making body, the supreme council, gave both his son and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin the boot. The duo were charged with having conspired with oppositionists to foment hatred against the party president, which in UMNO, is a crime punishable by an indefinite expulsion from the party.

As a matter of fact, it is a crime punishable by expulsion anywhere else in the world, even in opposition based parties here in Malaysia. Remember the time PKR expelled Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim from the party? The only crime Khalid ever committed was that he ran the state of Selangor with such prudence and fortitude, it worried Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim that Khalid was becoming too popular.

More than that, the jailed de facto PKR chief was infuriated that Khalid had refused to allow the party to use state funds to bankroll an uprising against the Federal government. Now, is that a valid reason to sack a party member?

So you see, Dato’ Seri Mukhriz Mahathir’s and Muhyiddin’s expulsions shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. And if it does, you should have been the first to have cried foul when Khalid was sacked from PKR back in 2014.In fact, both Mukhriz and Muhyiddin should be thanking their lucky stars that they were let to linger around UMNO for this long.

Yet, following the decision, there was just that much anger and hatred in Mahathir to go around the globe a million times. Still, that’s hardly surprising, as any father in his position would have felt the same way about his son getting booted from the party. But what is surprising is that all of Mahathir’s anger was centred on just one man – Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

Now, before we dive into the reason why Mahathir was pissed off with Muhyiddin, let’s be clear of one thing – it is not as if Mukhriz and Muhyiddin were unaware their days in the party were numbered. On the contrary, they had long known that their names were so toxic to the supreme council, that it was only a matter of time before they were booted out of the party.

So then, why was Mahathir foaming at the mouth to an extent that he refused to speak with Muhyiddin for almost 16 hours after the expulsion?

Well, apparently, it had to do with a series of articles that Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) had written that exposed a sex-scandal-gone-awry which both Muhtiddin and Mahathir had wanted kept under wraps. And in case you haven’t read any of those articles, you can read them here by clicking on the following links:

Muhyiddin wants Nika’s husband to sign a second SD

Muhyiddin must sue to prove his innocence

Stop grumbling, Muhyiddin, just show us the SD

Why did Muhyiddin block the court case if he is innocent?

Is Muhyiddin’s affair the funeral rites for Mahathir’s ANC?

Mahathir steps in to the divorce storm

Did Mahathir tell Hadi about Muhyiddin’s affair?

Why is Muhyiddin so quiet regarding the allegation of an affair?

Anyway, the timing of the exposes couldn’t have been any worse (or better, depending on which side of the political divide you’re on). Following the tragic helicopter crash in Sarawak, and just in case you didn’t notice, both Muhyiddin and Mukhriz were at their best behaviours and kept their activity in low orbit. They were so silent, it almost seemed as if they had been abducted by aliens or had simply turned their backs on Mahathir.

But it had nothing to do with any of that. After all, this is Mahathir’s son we’re talking about, and it isn’t likely that Mukhriz would betray his own father. Remember, everything that Mahathir did was to pave the way for his son to be PM by the year 2021, and Mukhriz knows well enough that without daddy’s support, he would not even qualify to be Najib’s chauffer, or for that matter, his butler.

So that means the duo had kept their activity low-key for a very specific reason. Apparently, Mahathir had delivered strict instructions that they were not to be seen loitering within a 10 km radius to where opposition leaders were during the Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar by-elections. If Mahathir had it his way, he would probably have locked them up in one of his secret chambers where billions of ringgit grew legs and crawled into during his days as PM.

Anyway, the bottom line is this – we know now why the duo was missing in action for some time before the polling day. But why would Mahathir have delivered such a bizarre directive, particularly when he needed all the support he could get in his bid to turn the electorate against Barisan Nasional (BN) and Najib?

The reasons are twofold.

First up, both Mukhriz and Muhyiddin knew that their expulsion was scheduled to take place right after the Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar by-elections. By not campaigning against BN, they hoped to turn their expulsion into a bullet which Mahathir would then use to fire at Najib. It was all planned – Mahathir would come right out after the sacking to say that “Najib is on a witch hunt to destroy anyone who is related to me.” And that’s the exact line that he intended to use – don’t ask me how I know, I’m not telling.

Anyway, the plan backfired. When RPK took the wraps off the steamy and juicy bits to Muhyiddin’s illicit affair with a famous lawyer’s Chinese wife, Mahathir forced Muhyiddin to campaign against BN at the eleventh hour as a measure of control against the damage that had been done. The expose threatened to jeopardize efforts to turn the electorate against Najib. To voters, Mahathir became just as big a crook as he claimed Najib was for having wanted to replace the PM with Muhyiddin.

And that is one reason why Mahathir was so pissed with Muhyiddin that he refused to entertain the latter’s calls for almost 16 hours or so after the expulsion. Of course, all of this was based on Mahathir’s foresight – which turned out to be true – that the duo would be expelled right after the twin by-election.

Then, there is this story about Mahathir having wanted to set up a ‘Third Force’, which incidentally, explains why the trio – Mukhriz, Muhyiddin and Mahathir – are extremely careful not to respond to any of my articles or allegations. Since I go by the name of ‘The Third Force’, they did not want to put me under the spotlight for a reason – they did not want me to steal their thunder.

As a matter of fact, it is the same reason why Anwar, Rafizi Ramli and Lim Kit Siang refuse to respond to any of my allegations. Rest assured, this isn’t a wild figment of my imagination, although I’ll probably get back to you on that story at a more appropriate time.

Notwithstanding, the whole idea of setting up a ‘Third Force’ predates to the month of November in 2015. That month, two very important decisions were made by two of Malaysia’s foremost arch rivals – Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir.

The first decision was made by Anwar himself, the current jailed opposition leader and husband to PKR president Datin Seri Wan Azizah. Several of Anwar’s most trusted confidantes somehow channelled a whisper through the prison walls that told of a pact Mahathir and the current Selangor Menteri Besar (MB), Azmin Ali, had entered into.

As the story goes, Anwar was told that it was only a matter of time before Azmin would go for Wan Azizah’s jugular in a bid to topple her as party president and to turn PKR into a ‘Third Force’. Incensed, the jailed opposition leader delivered strict instructions for Rafizi to help Wan Azizah stave-off a possible coup plot. Not only that, Anwar instructed the PKR secretary-general to dig up any amount of dirt he could on Azmin and the Darul Ehsan Investment Group (DEIG).

The second decision involved Mahathir, who got to know of all that was being whispered between Wan Azizah and Anwar. Both he and Azmin decided that any attempt to topple Wan Azizah would have to be put on the back burner until such a time that Azmin could tidy his act in Selangor. The thing is, Mahathir had known all along about the many skeletons that Azmin had hidden in his office closets.

Now, given that every other initiative to topple Najib failed, Mahathir realised he badly needed a ‘Third Force’ to assemble all of Najib’s detractors, the likes of Dato’ Seri Palanivel, Tun Ling Liong Sik, Dato’ Seri Khairuddin Abu Hassan, Matthias Chang, and of course, Muhyiddin and Mukhriz. But Mahathir was in a dilemma whether to turn PKR into the ‘Third Force’ or to set up a new political party altogether.

To date, Mahathir has received a pledge of four billion ringgit – a billion up from the three billion he was promised last December by those who agreed to finance the ‘Third Force’, a platform from which he has more or less decided to pivot an attack against BN.

To keep this story from dragging any further than it already has, I’ll cut short the part about Anwar’s letter from prison and how it was intended to jeopardise Azmin’s and Mahathir’s secret plot against Wan Azizah. Perhaps, I’ll write about it at another time when opportunity serves me best. For now, all that we need to know is this – by April, Mahathir realised that there wasn’t enough time to get a ‘Third Force’ together to coincide with his son’s sacking from UMNO.

And that’s the other reason why he had instructed Mukhriz and Muhyiddin to avoid being seen with members of the opposition during the twin by-electoral campaign. By keeping a low profile, Mahathir had hoped that the supreme council would hold their expulsion in abeyance on account of their ‘good behaviour’.

But shit hit Muhyiddin’s fan and splattered all over Mahathir’s face when RPK loaded the former’s sex scandal into a rocket and blew it to high heaven. Even the Gods were furious – I’m guessing. So intense was speculation about the affair in the lead up to the twin by-election that Mahathir forced Muhyiddin to the podium at the eleventh hour just to appease the Gods and to make a last ditch attempt to convince voters that RPK was a liar.

But the damage was done – Muhyiddin was seen campaigning against BN and was expelled from UMNO without any hesitation by the supreme council members. And that, in essence, is another reason why Mahathir refused to talk to Muhyiddin for almost 16 hours after the expulsion.