Mahathir steps up attack on UMNO

Mahathir steps up attack on UMNO
22 May, 2008

(Radio Singapore International) - Mahathir quit the ruling party on Monday in protest over Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's leadership and urged other members to follow suit.

However, on Tuesday lawmakers pledged their allegiance to Abdullah. Even Mahathir's son Mukhriz declined to resign from UMNO.

Mahathir's other son Mokhzani quit UMNO on Wednesday, warning it was heading for "annihilation" unless Abdullah stepped down.

The crisis has triggered an emergency meeting of UMNO's decision-making supreme council.

To find out more about the motivation behind Mahathir’s sudden resignation from UMNO, Shereena Sajeed spoke to Professor Hussin Mutalib from the National University of Singapore's Political Science Department.

HM: You know, it’s never easy to guess the real motivations of high-profile personalities and figures like former presidents and prime ministers like Mahathir too. If you were to want to engage in what I would call the conspiratorial kind of theory then you would want to believe that yes there is some possibility the incoming probe about the revelations on the Lingam video case could be something he probably would have considered. That’s one thing. A related possibility could be also the news which came out about a month ago that it is a matter of time before Mahathir himself will be suspended from UMNO. If not sacked, but at least suspended by the Supreme Council because they couldn’t stand the kind of issues and the regularity of the barrage Badawi in particular and UMNO and Barisan Nasional, in general. So that’s just one group of theories but I think probably my sense is that this is a man who really got fed up with what he regarded as the sheer reluctance of the Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi to hand over power.

After 22 years of leading UMNO and now with Dr Mahathir quitting the party, what impact would that have on the party? Would that make the party stronger or weaker?

HM: Well the quick answer would be it will weaken and in the worst case scenario destabilize the entire infrastructure machinery and the solidness of the UMNO fort because of his action. But this is again a worst case scenario. All will depend very much on the extent by which his call for UMNO members to resign in en masse, to follow his own example. This is still uncertain and too early to conclude at this moment because you are sensing that anything can go, the sense of unpredictability is still there. Of course, last night, the Prime Minister secured in a hush hush meeting of UMNO parlimentarians, a cordial support and a sense of unity and togetherness and everything else. But this is still too very early, you never know the rank and file, the grassroots UMNO, the thousands of other UMNO members across the nationwide Malaysian Peninsular, Sabah and Sarawak, whether they will be on the quiet side, calling for meetings, discussing about these issues, deciding to break ranks or not. We have to wait and see for the next one or two weeks to have a clearer picture about the impact of his call to UMNO members. Having said that, whatever the outcome, that even in the hypothetical case, that very few UMNO members acceded his call and this could happen when we are now even seeing the signal that his very own son, Mukhriz decided not to follow his call and that I think created a bit of a dent in the probable effectiveness of the call itself because if you can’t persuade your own son to join you in the kind of position that you are more than convinced is the right thing to do, then it raises the bigger question of how can you persuade the bigger, larger members of UMNO members to see the logic and validity of your own call. The party already has been weakened and the implications goes beyond than just weakening the party. It weakens the party, it weakens the Barisan Nasional, it very much challenges the leadership of the man himself, the Prime Minister Badawi.

Why has Dr Mahathir’s son, Mukhriz Mahathir not followed suit?

HM: Well the probable logic could be, you know, it’s a question of looking at two options available to him. One is to quit, and the other is to stay on. Both have its plus and minuses in terms of its incentives and dis-incentives. For him to quit, may put him and his father’s cause, into greater jeopardy, meaning once you quit the party, you will de-link and if you like, burn the bridges with whatever that is remaining that you may have in the party. Staying on in the party will have its privileges in the sense that you have an inside information of things that are being planned, you are privy to the important decisions that will be taken. You will have, as little as it may be, some role to play in trying to influence and give input to the important decisions which the UMNO Supreme Council, of which he is a member, will be taking. So I think it is a question of weighing, strategically, what would be best for him and the cost of UMNO in the future. So I think it’s a strategic calculation, more than anything else.