KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 — History may judge him harshly but for now Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is the winner. The man he has been attacking incessantly for the past 2 years is being forced to call time, forced to cave in to demands from the party grassroots for a clear succession plan.
The young leader he has caricatured as greedy, ambitious and the power behind the throne is viewed pretty much the same in and outside Umno, and is resigned to life on the fringes of politics.
Dr Mahathir’s fight to remove Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and preserve whatever remains of his legacy is nearing the end. He has been bruised and battered in the spat, with many Malaysians believing that while he can rightly claim to be the leader who put Malaysia on the fast track to development, he also destroyed some of its institutions and laid the seed of excesses and arrogance now overflowing in Umno.
His calls for Abdullah to step down and his re-emergence in the political sphere has also meant that his legacy of 22 years in power is being re-examined in less favourable light than it was in October 2003 when he handed over power to Abdullah.
Still, for the former PM it would be a price worth paying. Because he would have attained his primary goal of bringing down the man he despises and the secondary goal of becoming a voice of influence once again in Umno and Malaysia.Without a doubt, he carries some weight among Umno members. That is why party veterans Datuk Zainuddin Mydin and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yasin noted that his view on the party leadership was also a factor in how Umno members voted in the polls.
This influence has increased after Election 2008, with party members wounded and anxious over their future hold on power in Malaysia. His incessant attacks against Abdullah and Khairy Jamaludin have found favour with grassroots leaders.
His description of Abdullah’s leadership over the past two years has shaped how they view the man in Sri Perdana. His assertion of a climate of fear enveloping the party is being discussed robustly on the ground. His call to yank off this climate of fear is being followed.
All these facts were evident during post-election meetings in Kedah, Penang and, to a lesser extent, Johor.
In Penang, a few division leaders said that the party needs a strong leader, not a “lembik” (soft) one. They feared that Abdullah did not have the tools to repair the party. Some division chiefs like Datuk Shariff Omar, Datuk Ibrahim Saad and Datuk Musa Sheikh Fadzir wanted the PM to step down immediately.
A party official who attended the session told the Insider: “We agreed that this is not the time to be fearful. We know that some people may place files in front of us to shut us up. But this time, we cannot keep quiet. There is genuine concern that Umno could lose everything in the next election.’’
The businessman conceded that with Abdullah in power, there is less of a concern of underhanded tactics being used to hush dissent.
Party members in Penang and Kedah also urged the party leadership to show more respect to Dr Mahathir and stop the campaign in the media to investigate the former PM’s alleged misdeeds in power.
They were even more upset that Opposition politicians like Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang were publicly humiliating Dr Mahathir. The sentiment was that by not defending the former PM from Opposition attacks was akin to family members not lifting a finger to help their father.
In Kedah, some of the most vocal critics of Abdullah adopted the language and tone of Dr Mahathir.
Leading the charge was former Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Kadir Sheikh Fadzir. He said the choice of candidates for the election was wrong, complained that he had not been consulted and implied that Abdullah was not listening to party veterans. Never mind that Kadir met Abdullah and asked that his younger brother Aziz Sheikh Fadzir be allowed to contest the election in his place. Aziz, who became infamous for trying to scale the fence of the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall in 1999 to stop a Suqui gathering, was beaten badly in Bandar Baru Kulim.
Essentially, what Kadir said during the meeting in Sungai Petani mirrored what Dr Mahathir has been saying for a long time. In fact, one of the reasons why his relationship broke down with Abdullah was his grievance of not being consulted on important issues.
Dr Mahathir felt that he should have been accorded the status of a senior adviser to Abdullah (not unlike the position occupied by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew). Instead, he discovered to his chagrin that his successor was peeling away layer after layer of his legacy and exposing the cesspool underneath.
But Dr Mahathir, being the skilled politician he is, did not start attacking the PM until he sensed that the Umno ground was becoming a bit restless with Abdullah’s dithering style of leadership and Khairy’s growing tentacles in politics and business. That was in mid-2006.
He ramped up his attacks until health problems sent him to the National Heart Institute for a dangerous but necessary bypass. Abdullah’s aides knew that Dr Mahathir would come out with guns blazing if the election results did not go well for Umno and BN.
But he caught them by surprise when he fired the salvo before March 8, asking Malaysians to give the Opposition more representation in Parliament. After Kedah, Perak, Penang and Selangor fell to the Opposition the attacks became more blistering on Abdullah and Khairy. There was much traction on the ground.
In a Johor Umno meeting last week, division leaders said that Abdullah should stop listening to his “tukang bisik”. Datuk Halimah Sidek identified the “tukang bisik” as Khairy.
The state Umno leadership said that there was a strong perception that the son-in-law was having an inordinate say in all major decisions. There has no love lost between Dr Mahathir and Khairy since the early days of the Abdullah administration.
The former PM believes that Khairy accused him of emptying the government’s coffers through extravagance in a speech in Singapore. He also thinks that the Oxford graduate was the villain behind the strategy of stopping some mega projects and creating the impression that the Mahathir years had left Malaysia as a country without a soul. Even the decision for Anwar Ibrahim’s release from prison after the court overturned his sodomy conviction was assigned to Khairy.
Today, in some Umno circles, Khairy is viewed with more poison than Abdullah. Much of it is self-inflicted. The chauvinistic tone which he took to win support within Umno Youth did not endear him to non-Malays while his haste to become someone in Umno marked him out as a power-hungry young man within the party. The frequency of his name being tossed around by corporate figures and others created the impression that he was the biggest fixer in town.
It did not matter if there was more myth than fact in Dr Mahathir’s description of Khairy as the kid who had the final say in the election candidates’ list.
It gained traction among party members who now want both Abdullah and Khairy to take the blame for Election 2008 — Abdullah for showing weak leadership and Khairy for behind the power behind the throne.
Looking back, Dr Mahathir can claim credit for destroying Abdullah’s credibility as a leader and raising doubts about his leadership. He has been willing to go for broke to protect his legacy, his projects and the way he feels Malaysia should be run.
In the process, he knew that his record will be dredged up and put under the microscope like what is happening today. But in his mind, this is a small price to pay for achieving victory and pulling down a man who dared to try and wipe away his influence on Malaysia.
He will achieve partial victory because Abdullah will have to hand over power to Datuk Seri Najib Razak possibly by 2010. But his plan to convince the party to set up a council of veterans to advise the party president may not materialise. Najib and Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yasin view it as an attempt by Dr Mahathir to enter by the backdoor and run Umno, and by extension Malaysia.
The last thing they need is a perception that they are dancing to the tune of a power behind the throne.
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