The Longest serving Retiree and the Dawdling Prime Minister.

Dr Mahathir says he will continue to speak about the primacy of Malay interests. Why does he need to say this? Mainly because he isn’t confident that Najib knows how to be Malay first before he becomes a Malaysian leader. Najib, insists Mahathir, must be a Malay leader first and a Malaysian leader second. In this sense, Mahathir supports Muhyidin’s stand. Najib is diluting the primacy of Malay interests as how Mahathir defines it.

We know that Mahathir berates and runs down Najib in many private meet- -the-UMNO little Napoleons and Stalin sessions. Mahathir’s holds many closed door meetings. In these meetings, Mahathir bashes Najib. The rot, says Mahathir starts during Pak lah’s time; to Mahathir Pak lah is a bungling fool. Najib continues the inanity. Najib is a dawdler. That is worse than a person who decides quickly not to make any decisions.

Najib’s first mistake is to lose confidence in UMNO as a brand name. That is why Najib uses his own name Najib as a brand hoping that his personality and aura will compensate the shortcomings of UMNO. Next he uses 1Malaysia as a brand name. UMNO? UMNO is treated like a dirty 4-letter word. That is blasphemous and the prophet of UMNO will have none of that.

Najib according to Mahathir is ashamed to carry the UMNO brand around. As a result, auxiliary groups such as Perkasa come around rescuing the soul of UMNO. Everyone knows Perkasa is a subsidiary of UMNO. Perkasa sees itself as the keeper of the Malay conscience and therefore is tolerated and even viewed as a godsend by many Malays. The existence and spreading presence of Perkasa reflects the growing disenchantment with Najib. Perkasa’s spiritual adviser is of course Dr Mahathir.

Instead his people are selling the Najib brand name forgetting that Najib comes into office as the PM with the most personal baggage in history. Sometimes the Malaysian people wonder if we are electing a presidential candidate.

In addition, Najib is selling the 1Malaysia brand name which Mahathir says is confusing to people as different people read and understand the concept differently. To the Malays it means that there will no more vernacular schools. To the Chinese it means everyone is treated equally with no entitlement other that according to what one has contributed into the economy.

Najib’s people go everywhere touting Najib the brand name often relegating UMNO to a midwife’s role. Najib’s advisers think they are selling a presidential candidate and making out Najib as bigger than UMNO. That is the second costly mistake.

That leads to another mistake. Najib surrounds himself with sycophantic advisers more keen to be the bearer of good news rather that serving as hard-nosed reality checkers. These advisors, say Mahathir, are not in touch with political realities and most often lacked the sensitivities to appreciate the consequences of their actions. The advice they give to a not so intelligent PM combine to create a potent brew.

Mahathir dismisses the idea behind BR1M- that special scheme whereby the government hands out money to the people. This will be disastrous says Mahathir. It will create the impression among recipients that BR1M is a birth right entitlement. They will expect the same in the years to come. What will happen when the costs become unbearable to the government finances? To Mahathir- BR1M is like the man who rides on the back of the tiger who now fears to dismount because the tiger will eat him up.

Mahathir has information that Najib isn’t that strong even in his parliamentary seat. A relatively unknown, hailing from Terengganu managed to get 15,000 votes against Najib in his own backyard.  We are all surprised to know that Pekan has 80,260 voters. Of course I can understand that those who are not from Pekan will never understand this. That number will leave no walking space in the small town of Pekan.

From 2004 to 2008, the number of eligible voters increased by 5534 people. The number grew from 52, 683 in 2004 to 58,217 in 2008. That increase looked reasonable because during that time, Pekan has additional voters in the form of tentera wataniah and college teachers.

But from 2008 to 2023, the number of voters increased by a whopping 22,043. Now where do these people come from?  The sudden increase is unnatural.

We know and Mahathir is also reliably informed that during this period, Najib’s officers were busy with their own project IC and making address changes for people to vote in Pekan. At least there were 18,000 aliens given overnight ICs or people having their addressed changed to Pekan to enable them to vote for Kim Il Najib. His minders were busy facilitating ICs to be given to Myanmarese and Kampucheans. So that if we deduct 18,000 from Najib’s 35,000-majority, which would leave Najib with a majority of around 17,000 only. According to Pekan people, the increase in aliens in Pekan became most pronounced between 2008-2013.

In GE11, Najib got a majority of 22,922 in 2004. In GE12, his majority was 26,464. His real majority in GE13 after deducting the 18,000 or so aliens with overnight ICs and changed addressees was only 17,000 or so. Najib’s 35,000-majority in 2013 was contributed by the influx of new voters who appeared from nowhere. Mahathir was well informed about these things because there are many secret service people who are loyal to Mahathir.

For the man justifiably credited with spawning money politics, BR1M is shocking even to him. During Mahathir’s time, money politics was restricted to buying off convention delegates and paying off rival politicians. Under Najib, the practice of vote buying has gone en masse.

BR1M is essentially the boldest and explicit form of money politics. It’s now an established policy instrument by the government to corrupt people and induce them to keep the ruling elite in power. What the government has done is to install giving out bribes as a legitimate governing instrument. While this is going on, interested parties who are supposed to defend the administration’s integrity and professionalism keep quite. I am talking specifically about the civil service and heads of independent commissions.

While we can understand the chief secretary of the cabinet functioning as nothing else but a pleading lapdog, what about heads of independent commissions? For example on what and whose authority, the head and deputy head of SPR make political speeches? On what authority did the deputy head pf SPR announced that promises of projects and handing out of cash do not amount to bribery and corruption? He is not a politician but an officer of a commission answerable and responsible to the Agong who is supposed to be above partisan politics.

Money politics is nothing more than the buying of votes so that the buyer remains in power. Once in power, he has to recover the amount of money he has spent out plus a tidy sum of profit to prepare for the next round of vote buying. Hence the practice will self-perpetrate and becomes ingrained as a political culture. Meanwhile the voting public gets sucked into the black hole of money politics at each successive rounds until they see money politics as part and parcel of the ruling government’s benevolence.