In one Stroke Najib Killed Two Birds With One Stone

How many people could see Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s brilliant chess move last weekend when he not only killed two birds with one stone but threw in a bonus kill at the same time?

First Najib used the Umno assembly to reveal DAP’s real agenda: which is to demolish Malay political domination and replace it with a DAP-led Pakatan Harapan where the Malays would be proxies of the Chinese. And if the Umno delegates plus the Malays all over Malaysia who were monitoring the developments of the assembly were not convinced enough, Najib threw in the following videos halfway through his speech for dramatic affect.

At the same time the social media played up the fact that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was not invited to DAP’s convention. That raised the question of whether Mahathir’s new party, Pribumi, is going to be invited to join Pakatan Harapan after all. The impression that Lim Kit Siang was giving is that he sees Pribumi as a Malay party that is trying to become the alternative to Umno. And that may not make the Chinese too happy. After all, Mahathir has never hidden the fact that he hates Jews and Chinese with equal ferocity.

Mahathir has already warned the Malays that DAP must never be given power or else the Malays are going to become slaves in their own country. It is a sentiment that Mahathir held since the 1960s and he has never changed his stand regarding the Chinese. It is just that the Chinese somehow do not see this and love to live in denial.

If you were to review the developments over the last 24 months since December 2014, you can see that the first six months Mahathir was doing all the attacking while Najib just remained silent. Mahathir was the hunter and Najib the hunted and many interpreted Najib’s silence as a sign of defeat.

On the seventh month, Najib counter-attacked. He did not rant, rave and scream like Mahathir did over six months. Najib walked silently while carrying a big stick and clobbered all his adversaries good and proper. Mahathir tried a comeback three months later with his planned vote of no confidence in Parliament and, again, two months later in December with another planned vote of no confidence in the Umno assembly. Both failed and Najib struck back early this year by removing Mukhriz as the Kedah Menteri Besar.

Najib had turned the tables on Mahathir and the hunter now became the hunted. Najib started the year with the maxim that you draw the enemy into your battleground (as Sun Tzu had taught) and force your enemy to act against his own interest. Many thought that the logical course of action would be for Najib to kill Mahathir. Instead, Najib made Mahathir kill himself by committing political hara-kiri. Killing someone is easy. Making someone commit suicide is a work of art.

Which one is the pimp and which one the whore? Hard to tell when both are using one another.

If Najib kills Mahathir that would turn him into a martyr. If instead Najib pushes Mahathir into the arms of DAP that would make the old man a pariah instead of a martyr. So, by sacking Mukhriz, Mahathir, who has a huge ego and likes to sulk, would not leave this matter alone. He would react and as he has reacted in the past he would merajuk and resign from Umno.

It was crucial that Mahathir resigns from Umno because Kit Siang would not want to work with Mahathir if he were still an Umno member. Mahathir has to leave Umno before DAP would want to welcome him. So, Mahathir did what Najib wanted him to do: he resigned from Umno.

DAP and Pakatan Harapan have always had this penchant for picking up politicians who resign or get kicked out from other parties, especially those from Barisan Nasional. Pakatan Harapan is like a recycling plant that takes other people’s waste. Najib knew that if Mahathir leaves Umno then DAP and/or Pakatan Harapan would gleefully take him.

What Kit Siang failed to consider is the backlash that DAP would suffer if they take in Mahathir. Mahathir would not be bringing any goodwill with him. In fact, there is still much bad blood that Mahathir carries, which the DAP members and grassroots can never forgive and forget. An old politician like Kit Siang should have realised this. After all, Najib did. But somehow, maybe due to desperation or political bankruptcy, Kit Siang did not see this as clearly as Najib did.

To the top leaders of DAP and Pakatan Harapan, political expediency is more important than principles, credibility and morality. And people like Kit Siang thought that this is also what the rest of the opposition grassroots would uphold. Kit Siang grossly underestimated the sentiments of the grassroots, as this video shows.

Shamser Singh Thind’s reaction is just the beginning. The reaction at the bottom regarding the deal that DAP is making with Mahathir is really stirring things up. And all this is not happening by chance. Najib had planned this and he knew for this to happen it has to start with Mahathir resigning from Umno. And that will happen for sure if Mukhriz is removed as the Kedah Menteri Besar.

Once Mahathir resigned from Umno, he had to decide whether to directly join DAP as a party member, which would have been the best for Najib and Umno, or whether to opt for the second alternative, which is to set up new party and join or collaborate with the DAP-led Pakatan Harapan. Since DAP and Pakatan Harapan did not seem to want to invite him to become their member, Mahathir decided on the second alternative, which is to set up a new party called Pribumi.

Kit Siang, being an old politician, realised the potential danger of accepting Mahathir’s party as a component member of Pakatan Harapan. Kit Siang does not mind working with Mahathir as an individual but to welcome his party as a component of Pakatan Harapan is another thing altogether and Kit Siang’s instinct told him it is not a good idea.

When Mahathir saw that Kit Siang was dragging his feet and appeared reluctant in accepting Pribumi as a member of Pakatan Harapan, the old man approached Anwar Ibrahim, which was that meeting they had in court on 5th September 2016.

READ HERE:  Mahathir meets Anwar in Malaysia’s High Court for first time in 18 years

Mahathir somehow had the impression that Anwar is the de facto Opposition Leader and that he could open the door for Pribumi to join Pakatan Harapan. When that did not work, on 4th November 2016 Mahathir sent Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Ali to meet Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, thinking that she could probably get things moving.

READ HERE:  Siti Hasmah and Wan Azizah meet for first time in 18 years

Mahathir somehow did not realise what Najib already knew: which is that both Anwar and Wan Azizah are not the real leaders of Pakatan Harapan. It now suddenly dawned on Mahathir that Anwar and Wan Azizah are not the real movers and shakers behind Pakatan Harapan. The real de facto leader of Pakatan Harapan is actually Lim Kit Siang. That was the biggest mistake that Mahathir made and he realised too late this mistake. And Najib, who knew this all along, capitalised on this fact and manoeuvred Mahathir into making this colossal blunder that is going to cost him big-time.

Najib needed Mahathir to go crawling to Kit Siang and for Kit Siang to welcome Mahathir with open arms. But this was not happening so Najib needed to do something. And he did this by revealing what DAP was up to and their real political agenda at the Umno assembly last weekend. Najib used Superman Hew’s video to expose not only to Umno delegates but to all Malays throughout Malaysia as to what DAP thinks of the Malays and what DAP’s game plan is: which is to use PKR, PAN and Pribumi to screw the Malays. This panicked Kit Siang and he had to prove Najib wrong and that DAP had always planned to have Malays and not Chinese to run the country and to become the Prime Minister.

Mahathir DAP

Mahathir has now been given the same status as the top DAP leaders.

So, after earlier announcing that Mahathir was not going to be invited to the DAP convention, Kit Siang had to do a u-turn and invite Mahathir to attend after all. And if Mahathir agrees he would be given VVIP status and would be seated on stage at the main table right next to the party leaders.

Kit Siang played right into Najib’s hands. In one stroke Najib killed two birds with one stone: Mahathir and Kit Siang. Now Mahathir is seen as what Shamser said, a pimp, while Kit Siang has become Mahathir’s whore (or Mahathir’s bitch, as they would say in America).

Mahathir unwittingly became Najib’s Trojan Horse and Kit Siang did not even wise up to this fact. The Malays are now angry with Mahathir for selling out while the Chinese are angry with Kit Siang for discarding principles, credibility and morality. The Malays have never trusted DAP and neither have the Chinese trusted Mahathir. It is a strange marriage that they saw at the DAP convention last weekend and something that does not go down well with both Malays and Chinese.

It was a double-kill for Najib using just one stone. And the bonus that Najib received was that suddenly Anwar is no longer in the equation. Anwar was not part of the deal last weekend and what Anwar wants, or does not want, no longer matters. In fact, Wan Azizah was seated far from the centre and placed next to Mat Sabu, reducing her to the same level as Mat Sabu, or what the Malays call Tukang Karut or court jester.

Raja Petra Kamarudin