Najib Razak’s Image and Malaysia’s Reputation
March 24, 2009
by Terence Netto
Can we trust him to lead our country with Rosmah as his confidant ?
From London and Paris to Jakarta and Brisbane notable publications have cast doubt on the Najib Razak’s worthiness for the PM’s office. It is safe to say that no prime ministerial succession – we have had four in the last 38 years – has had as underwhelming a reception in the international media as Najib Razak’s.
Najib, who would be Malaysia’s sixth prime minister, is expected to be sworn in on April 3, a little more than a week after his party UMNO, dominant member of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, endorses him as its 7th president in its 63-year history. Traditionally, the UMNO president assumes the post of prime minister of the country. It is only to be expected that the international media would accord features and comment on the impending investiture.
If memory serves, only Dr Mahathir Mohamed’s acclamation as UMNO president in June 1981 and consequent elevation to the office of Prime Minister of Malaysia incurred a negative vibe in that the international media noted he was the author of the callous “We will shoot them” remark in connection with the mass landing of Vietnamese refugees (The infamous boat people) off the Terengganu coast in the mid-1970s.
In that episode, Dr Mahathir, not a politician to speak in mincing accents when he feels strongly on an issue, was responding to an emergency, viewed in Malaysia at that time to be far more unsettling for reason of its larger scope, to the recent landing of starving Rohingya Muslims off Thailand’s Andaman coast. Imagine the international reaction if Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had given vent to a similar imprecation in respect of the Rohingyas!
Even comments by international correspondents on another downside of Dr Mahathir — that he was once viewed as a Malay ultra — did not weigh the international media’s reception to him in mid-1981 in favor of the negative. It could be said that the general reaction to Mahathir was considerable expectation weighted with some trepidation.
The international media’s reaction to the appointments of second prime minister Abdul Razak, third PM Hussein Onn, (Dr Mahathir was fourth) and fifth PM Abdullah Badawi, were unremarkable . Not so with Najib Razak. The international media’s reaction, thus far, has been wholly negative.
Now there is something to be said for what one could term as the ‘S. Rajaratnam Journalistic Stricture.’ This refers to the school of reporting practiced by international correspondents (he variously excoriated them as of the ‘James Bond’ school) who, he said, would descend on a country and proceed to suggest omniscience on the basis of conversations with taxi drivers on the ride in from the airport and with the barkeep at the hotel. Rajaratnam, the late Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Singapore, was inveighing against the journalistic school whose practitioners’ superficial contact with the people and country of their itinerant focus results in articles that are neither instructive nor illustrative of a larger point.
Hardly any of the articles that have appeared in recent weeks in publications as varied as Liberation in Paris and the Far Eastern Economic Review on Najib’s impending swearing-in as Prime Minister of Malaysia were by itinerant correspondents. In the main, the reportage was by seasoned Asian hands who have logged many miles and destinations in Southeast Asia. (In other words, they don’t belong to the James Bond school of international correspondents.)
The distilled essence of their articles: the 54-year-old Najib Razak’s arrival at the top political office in Malaysia is gifted by a sense of entitlement more potent than explicable by his impressive pedigree and long preparation. Otherwise the questions that could reasonably be asked of him in connection with the murder of the Mongolian beauty Altantuya Shaaribuu in October 2006 are too searing to leave him unscathed and therefore untrammeled in his progress to the top of the greasy pole, in Disraeli’s famous phrase.
Just now there is a peculiar asymmetry between the claim of Dr Mahathir, Najib’s chief promoter for the office of Prime Minister, that the Malays are under threat in Malaysia and the sense of entitlement that propels Najib to that office. Perhaps Dr Mahathir thinks that Malay special rights are not so much privilege as entitlement, just as all of UMNO, possibly barring Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, think that the position of UMNO president and prime minister of Malaysia is not a privilege to be earned by Najib as something he is entitled to.
This is from the standpoint that there is distinction between a privilege and an entitlement: one suggests that it must be earned, the other is yours regardless of the incidentals, even if it be the loss of a human life.
Najib has choreographed his meteoric rise to power well and is about to deliver the kiss of the dragon. The rest of us are still waiting for the knight in shining amour to come save us. Pathetic!
Mr Bean - March 24, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Bean,
The way you put it sound like Blue Ocean strategy in which you make your competitors irrelevant.
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Mr. Tean,
When Najib applies his Blue Ocean Strategy, he makes the opposition increasingly relevant because Malaysians want change. Remember the March 8 political tsunami (2008) which now makes Badawi to lose his job and his legacy–if there is such a thing under Badawi–is now in tatters. This Islam Hadhari exponent is rejected by his own party and must resort to gardening as a means of staying alive. He will perhaps be remembered as an exponent of empty promises and the most incompetent Prime Minister we have had since Independence. In my book, he is total disgrace and the laughing stock of ASEAN.
Najib and his henchman, Syed Hamid Albar, the Arab from Hadramawt, are stoking the flames of civil society wrath by banning alternative newspapers like Suara KeDILan and Harakah, and will eventually pay the price.
Enough of their arrogance. It is a sign of an insecure and bankrupt UMNO leadership of our country. Let us move forward undeterred by threats of an anachronistic and much discredited regime. Please read Anwar Ibrahim’s Media Statement on this blog. Let the 3 by-elections be a referendum. Voters must register their disgust of Najibian administration that is corrupt and undemocratic.—Din Merican
tean - March 24, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Many developing countries were unable to achieve developed status because they alowed national affairs to be personlised and personal affairs to be nationalised.
Thumb Logic - March 25, 2009 at 6:56 pm
“He will perhaps be remembered as an exponent of empty promises and the most incompetent Prime Minister we have had since Independence.” Din Merican.
On the other hand I feel Malaysians owe a lot to this man – and to the one who put him in charge of the switch. By falling asleep in front of the switch, he showed ordinary Malaysians that doing nothing is not an option. We need to run in order to stay put.
He strengthens and unites the political opposition. The guy shows that when it comes to liberty, equality and justice for all you cannot afford to remain neutral. He has prepared Malaysians well for what is to come when his successor takes over.
That is how much we owe the man. His only fault is that the shoes he wears are too big for him. But then the salesman who ‘sold’ him the shoes never intended them to fit.
Mr Bean - March 25, 2009 at 8:13 pm