April 7, 2015
Malaysia’s Kingslayer and Kingmaker
by Scott Ng@www.freemalaysiatoday.com
Kingslayer. Kingmaker. Mahathir is both, having installed prime ministers and unseated them. As the single most influential force in Malaysian politics today, Mahathir’s words have incredible authority, and his disapproval will weigh heavily on those who fail to live up to his expectations.
Such is the fate of Najib Razak, who now bears the unflattering distinction of being Mahathir’s current target for extermination.With Mahathir finally voicing his opinion that Najib must step down for the good of the country, a candidate must step up to grab the brass ring. Thus far, the good doctor has not indicated any preference, and he is looking for someone to step up to the plate and demonstrate the kind of leadership skills and political savvy he likes in a leader.
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the Kelantan prince fondly known as Ku Li, has already thrown his name into the ring with a brutally honest speech in Parliament, and he recently called on Najib to answer the accusations levelled at him by Mahathir.
While Mahathir has never been a fan of Ku Li, the prince is well known for his accomplishments and is well versed in politics. He is a figure that commands respect, and has an intimate understanding of economics from several positions he held in his earlier career as a politician. The dignified demeanour of Ku Li would be a breath of fresh air against the ostentatiousness of Najib and his cohorts.
One must also keep in mind the dark horse for the title of Prime Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein. As we speculated some time back, Hisham has weaved his way into the public consciousness and made a case for himself by being on the ball with the MH370 disaster, and that effort has paid off with a Merdeka Centre poll showing him as a preferred future candidate for the post of Prime Minister.
However, if he indeed is reaching for the brass ring, Hisham will need to make it clear that he does not stand on Najib’s side in the current conflict. Refusing to commit will earn only Mahathir’s ire, and if it is indeed true that Hisham’s ultimate goal is to become the Prime Minister, he will have to pay tribute to the grand old man and oppose Najib.
Sensing the changing tides, even Youth Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has called upon Najib to answer Mahathir’s accusations. Khairy does indeed have potential, with Mahathir’s confidante Kadir Jasin once labellling him as a potential deputy prime minister.
Mahathir has seemingly rebuffed Muhyiddin Yassin, refusing to endorse the DPM. It is worth noting that Muhyiddin is believed to be siding with Mahathir, but it seems like he has not stepped up to the plate in a manner acceptable to Mahathir.
The Kingmaker is looking to make a new king. Before he deposes the current one, he will look for a new candidate among those in government. It is time for those who would claim power to make their case to the the grand old man and prove their worth.
Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger 
Hishamuddin will be a disaster. Furthermore, he is closely identified with Najib and does not have the guts and nerves to reform UMNO and transform the political economy of Malaysia. Check his background carefully. Khairy should be a better candidate. but it is too early for him to show his card. What about Nur Jazilan, the PAC Chairman? Not sure if he acceptable to UMNO. So Ku Li is the man of the moment.Despite his Royal background, he has the experience to be our next Prime Minister. –Din Merican
Its pretty clear that what Mahathir wants is for his son to eventually take over. Truth be told, there is no one in UMNO/BN to take over. In fact there is no one in the top leadership of both sides of the aisle good enough for what most rakyat wants. Like it or not, the younger leaders have to find away to wash away the past, come to a new consensus for the country to move forward. But we have learned to be too self-centered, too ambitious for us to secure our future together. THIS nation is broken, it can’t be fixed without cathartic destructionm without a new idea of what the nation is to be..
Ku Li and Nur Jazlan have better standing, they should even find a way to bring the former dep eudcation minister Sham. But these suggestions is something that will fall the deaf ears, They most famous combinatiion always awaiting to happen backed by Supreme council and branch leaders is Muhyiddin and Zahid Hamidi. Closely behind is Hishamuddin and Tun Progeny of Mukriz needs a post to help advance. these can be made acceptable to Tun M if he is provided an avenue to steer the ship or even create an archive of political believes and decision making which new PMs will follow everyday after their morning prayers, Now this is a proper model for success ala UMNO. We have to be pragmatic Tun M will be around at Least 120 years and will continue making pain – so lets include everyone and properly and make it work , otherwise it will be many stalemates and many PM’s who won’t make it. Noe is these are my fervent wish, but commenting rather with cynical observation of another unelected PM in the making…Yes sir, Msia needs a elected PM not one decided by a council of elders.
For the good of the nation,
TRH as the next PM of Malaysia.
Formation of a Unity Government, with the DPM
coming from Pakatan Rakyat.
The most capable persons possible for
Minister of Finance and Deputy Minister of Finance, to clean up the
mess left by the present 1PM and 1Finance Minister.
These do not need to be politicians from BN or PR.
And no more nonsense such as Second Finance Minister and
two Deputy Finance Ministers.
In an Oil Palm Estate as in a Rubber Estate do you see other plants growing? That is where we are now. You have to choose between an Oil Palm and a Rubber Tree. My only take is that we have to choose wisely. Like many Third World Countries We are now at the proverbial flexible fork. And you can only go up or down.
What is TDM’s ultimate objective?
To get his son to be DPM as soon as possible, and if possible PM as well before he meets LKY and continue their “disagreements”
That being the case, the candidate to displace Najib should have 3 “Not Toos”:-
1. Not too young;
2. Not too powerful in UMNO;
3. Not too “clean”
Apart from being very articulate there is nothing exceptional about Hishamuddin. He is apt in playing to the gallery. He once raised the Kris(?) to quench it with Chinese(?) blood and may do so again if occasion demands it and if it would seal his elevation. He keeps his ambition in check, silently harbouring the “eventuality” of DPM or PM’s post falling on his lap.
Khairy is intelligent, articulate and covertly very ambitious. To some, he is double-faced, lacking consistency – opportunistic or Machiavellian to some extent. Way back, after Anwar’s release from first sodomy charge, he went to see Anwar to pay homage and perk him up but later as he made his way up in UMNO, he started condemning Anwar like no other UMNO leader. Also for quite sometime now, he has been backing Najib to the hilt. But just few days earlier he wanted Najib to answer all Mahathir’s charges against him. He is a man with a mask and what is behind it is something we are yet to know. How to trust such a man. His youth, too much of cleverness and ambition is his undoing.
DPM Muhyiddin Yassin is perceived as racist, distrusted by the non-Malays, the Chinese in particular. He is akin to a flying bird – one wing intact and the other partially damaged. It won’t stay up long, bound to crash land.
Ku Li is the best bet. He is able, experienced and composed. He is a bridge builder and consensus seeker and likely to get the support of all factions, especially if Mahathir were to propose him as PM. He and Mahathir should meet up to mend their differences and work towards national good.
KJ will be a worst disaster than Hishamuddin. Nur Jazlan will be a complete disaster. Mahathir will meet his match in Najib/Rosamah. Unlike Badawi Najib knows what it takes to get those that matters in UMNO/BN to prop him – money!! His coffers will be replanished by the GST funds now.
“…….Despite his Royal background, he has the experience to be our next Prime Minister.” –Din Merican
This will eventuate when Ku Li leaves UMNO Baru. Hopefully, he will be sensible enough to realise that Umno Baru with its rotten core, is beyond redemption. Unfortunately, the nation does not have the luxury of time for its overdue rejuvenation.
As for KJ, he looks promising on paper for a deputy PM post. Granted, he may possess an inkling of credible leadership, he still needs to remove his 4th floor baggage and avoid comparison with another one before him who had everything going for him but threw it all away and blew himself with blind personal ambition, impatience and power.
A possible and plausible alternative is for Ku LI and the few remaining good men and women from Umno Baru to crossover to the political divide to join PR, followed suit by the PAS Erdogan Liberals.
The question is. “if the mountain will not move, will Mohammed come to the mountain?
As for PAS, they can crawl back to Umno Baru! But I doubt if they will be welcome there as even a gravy laden, train load of decrepit and foolish but proud thieves, have their twisted sense of dignity! 🙂
Frankly speaking I’m not interested in speculating on as to who will succeed Najib. My hope is that he hangs onto the job and come GE14 we floor him and BN once and for all. My immediate concern is the laws being slipped through parliament. Last night the so-called POTA went through by a vote of 79/60? Only 79 BN votes and there are the rest of the Pakatan MPs? If they had shown up in full, they could give a biter fight if no total temporarily stopped the bill. If these Pakatan guys are arrested by POLIS and are detained under this law, they deserve it.
Also Putrajaya is strengthening the Sedition law in the current session so that anyone named by POLIS for sedition will literally be detained at their pleasure.
Dato, Khairy seriously? As i said before he’s a racist & we had enough of racist politicians from UMNO already. Ku Li would be a better choice but definitely not Muhyiddin,Hishamuddin or Khairy. They won’t be any different from Najib.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/04/07/najib-husni-should-be-sacked-for-incompetence/
Khairy as PM? No way!
He was responsible for a very violent demonstration by UMNO Youth and PERKASA Youth in Georgetown on July 1 2012 marching from the Mesjid Kapitan Keling to the CM’s office in KOMTAR – damaging cars and motorcycles along the route..
Later on the same demonstrators parked their expensive Porsche Cayennes and Toyota Alphards and BMW 5-series haphazardly along the Penang Bridge causing a 20km traffic congestion on both sides of the bridge… causing a massive delay for everyone especially those who were just returning home from their work on mainland and island….
Khairy also was supporting a very personal and vicious attack on Lim Guan Eng’s teenage son by a pro-UMNO blogger Papagomo – accusing the young teenager of molesting a girl who was later identified as a Chess Master from HK whom he had never met. Not a single word of apology from Khairy to CM Lim. It was also during this episode that he made an irresponsible statement about Lim Guan Eng’s son having his “Kampung Buah Dada” instead of like his father’s Kampung Buah Pala….
I do not think Khairy qualifies even to be a minister, let alone as a Prime Minister…
The most rational outcome would be like what Phua Kai Lit describes, however I do have my reservations about TRH – how could anyone trust a man who votes for hudud, when there was no practical or pragmatic reason for him to ?
HH would seem the better choice over MY but that’s like having the choice between two different types of natural disasters.
This is what I wrote about KJ (and Rafizi and Karim Raslan on another blog) :
“KJ and Rafizi Ramli (henceforth the Cherub) are what I like to call post Mahathir Malay Elites. Both are contenders in a Malay political system predicated on retaining power through a complex system of patronage. Both are beneficiaries of an affirmative system that created a class of Malay elites of who our dear Karim Raslan is the pied piper of that class’s anomie.
Both have to contend with issues of Malay identity, which is what happens when you are cut off from the vox populi of the ethnic group you claim to represent.
While KJ immersed himself in the swamp of UMNO politics leveraging his unMalay mystique and his father in law’s benign neglect to amass influence and money, the Cherub rode on a way of populist sentiment fuelled by Non Malay frustration but harnessed by Malay realpolitik to emerge as the face of the “acceptable forward thinking Malay” much beloved by Pakatan partisans.”
The problem Mahathir has that there is no real contender for the throne and all the pretenders are incompetent plutocrats who are the products of his tenure. Perhaps he could find a puppet who would allow his strings to be pulled but so far the barrel is full of rotten apples and the marginally competent candidates have been poached by his nemesis.
Also has anyone read his latest post ? Here’s what he says about the Mongolian murder :
“14. Sudah lapan tahun berlalu kenapa bangkit perkara ini? Ini bukan masalah lapan tahun dahulu. Yang saya soal ialah berkenaan masalah hari ini – masalah nyawa dua orang anggota polis yang dihukum bunuh. Amatlah tidak adil jika mereka dibunuh sedangkan mereka sebagai pegawai rendah polis hanya mengikut perintah.”
Yeah, because the great injustice here is that the lives of two admitted assassins is the balance.
Here is Malaysia’s kingmaker.
“Perhaps he could find a puppet who would allow his strings to be pulled…”
I dunno maybe Mukhriz Mahathir ? Install him and then have a coterie of trusted advisors to bring back Mahathirism .
Will these clowns repeal POTA and any other money funnelling schemes of the current PM ? Will anyone who assumes the UMNO throne do that?
The OS was never a centrist but he managed to control the right wing elements of his party some what by appeasing and pointing to various non BN boogiemen.
Now with ISMA and PERKASA as the frontmen of Malay BN politics and PAS as the Saruman (book not film version) of Malay politics, there’s not much wiggle room to the middle.
Sure a complete turn around could be in the works but that would take imagination and guts that is unfortunately in short supply in UMNO.
Politics should not be seen as a zero sum game. The art of the possible includes the waiting game for rich picking should the opportunity come your way. Ku Li may just be in this situation.
By supporting hudud he does not give anything away really. Hudud is not going to happen. Thinking minds know that. To implement hudud even at State level the Federal Government has to give approval and for that the constitution has to be amended with a two-third majority (I hope I am right on this and stand to be corrected) With more than half the total number of MPs being non-Muslims and anti-hudud (including a few BN MPs from the mainland, those of DAP and PKR, and a good number from Sabah and Sarawak) it may take few decades, if at all, for hudud law to pass the muster in Parliament.
It was reported recently that a Kelantan Government conducted survey showed that more than 90% of the people in the State wanted hudud to be implemented. Under such scenario it will be unwise of Ku Li to openly oppose hudud in Kelentan Assembly. It will be political hara-kiri.
Dua Kali Lima….
http://malaysiaflipflop.blogspot.com/2015/04/malaysians-are-suckers.html
“Hudud is not going to happen. Thinking minds know that.”
It would have cost nothing for Ku Li to oppose it symbolically, right ? Zaid Ibrahim said that Tok Guru knew that hudud would never be implemented on a Federal level and would be challenged on a State level but he did it to keep a campaign promise.
Ku Li is an old hand in Kelantan politics who has weathered much worse politically than the recent floods. Nobody takes that 90% figure seriously and anecdotally speaking young people in Kelantan are livid that this is an issue as opposed to reconstruction.
The fact that Ku Li didn’t choose the maverick role like what Mahathir would have done but instead followed orders from Putrajaya demonstrates yet that nobody in UMNO certainly not someone like Ku LI has the guts to make bold political plays that would benefit UMNO but more importantly BN.
And hudud is already happening in this country or rather that process of Islamization. There are already problems with conversions which as we saw the civil courts have very little power over and that the security apparatus would not acknowledge . Muslims are treated differently under certain laws like sedition etc. The list goes on. Same crap different shovel, so to speak.
“It would have cost nothing for Ku Li to oppose it symbolically, right ?” No, wrong, if he were to survive, much less go forward, from Kelentan, his political base. He probably wont even be re-elected as an MP and PAS may make sure of it. Other vultures in UMNO may not want a safe UMNO seat to be given to him.
But still a ray of hope remains. A seat in Kedah may secure him victory especially if Dr Mahathir and our good Dato were to canvass for him.
I truly appreciate the diverse viewpoints and rebuttals coming from readers of this blog. It is a learning curve for everyone. Cheers!
“No, wrong, if he were to survive, much less go forward, from Kelentan, his political base. He probably wont even be re-elected as an MP and PAS may make sure of it. Other vultures in UMNO may not want a safe UMNO seat to be given to him.”
Um, you are aware that Ku Li has held the Gua Musang seat since like forever. He is probably the longest serving MP in Parliament . His base was with him through the Semangat 46 bravado , court cases and then his return to UMNO. Ku Li doesn’t have a base he has a cult.
Looking over his career he doesn’t need to move out of Kelantan. Everyone knows him across Malaysia. He has strong ties to the Western Establishment due to his past career achievents, not to mention supporters within UMNO , Keadilan not to mention the DAP.
And younger PAS members covertly support him not to mention the Royalty who will always be indebted to him for fighting for their immunity privilege – which they lost.
Ku Li is not a survivor in any sense of the word. He is legend.
People should be disappointed that he voted for hudud, which perhaps implies a deeper Malay game.