Mahathir the happiest man Part 5

Mahathir won the 1987 great contest by paper thin majority and it clearly showed the force against him were very formidably redoubtable.

In fact, many were talking about the votes being rigged by Sanusi Junid, the Secretary General of UMNO, but let that be a personal thing to Sanusi and let us not even mention it.

TR, as perfect gentlemen went up the stage to congratulate Mahathir and called for everybody to close rank and to go forward in the party’s struggles but Mahathir did not reciprocate that gesture.

TR then called all leaders who were in his team both the ones who won and lost in the election to give some good advice and to do what they should do being in the losing team.

TR advice those in his team and who were still in the cabinet to resign as the group failed to secure the mandate from the delegates to go for a change.

As a perfect gentlemen and a perfect democrat, he was in the opinion that going against Mahathir was a crudely real illustration of no confidence to the leadership and going to the delegates was to get the mandate to replace him (Mahathir).

Since the delegates were not giving to him (TR) and the team the mandate, it is always proper that his team should gentlemanly resign and that is the practice of a real democracy, the Westminster like.

Except for Rais Yatim, the rest did not heed all the advice of TR and chose to remain in the line-up of the cabinet and the government. Rais resigned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instantaneously.

We knew Mahathir had the right to drop them, and he had the liberty to choose leaders who had the confidence in him.

Abdullah Badawi, Shahrir Abdul Samad, Rahmah Osman, Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, Zainal Abidin Zain and few others did not resign.

TR felt that it was tough for Mahathir to maintain them in the line-up as he was all out as that was democracy at work; the winning party has to have the liberty and right to choose his team and the losing party has to follow through in the real spirit of democracy.

In the first cabinet meeting 10 days after, I was at Pak Lah’s office and he said that nothing had happened and there was no reshuffling or anything like that, and he looked happy thinking that everyone was accepted and status quo maintained.

But soon after his post cabinet meeting, a terminating letter came from PM’s office and it was apparent that everyone from the B team was dropped from the cabinet, the decision that Mahathir had every right to do.

Abdullah took it as a very lousy and awful experience. He went straight back home and I saw the high ranking army officer carrying his brief case in one hand and holding Abdullah’s spectacle in his other hand to his car.

I was again at his Medang Kapas house at dinner time, in Bukit Bandaraya, and I remembered Dato' Mohammad Hamzah and few others joining us for the dinner.

Abdullah felt crushed being dropped by Mahathir from the cabinet and we could read clearly that his mind was in serious disorder.

I innocently asked him, “Pasai apa Pak Lah nampak teruk sangat?”, and he instantly answered me, “Hang tak tau, jadi Menteri ni…hang tengok tadi spec Pak Lah pun colonel yang pegang”.

I answered him back, “Kalau Pak Lah utamakan perkara itu, in the first place kenapa nak lawan-lawan?”. He didn’t answer me and I excused myself and went back to sleep.

Since that incident I had been quite disappointed with Abdullah as he did not have finesse as a leader and I was wrong to look at him as an original UMNO member per se because of his answer to my question.

He displayed his weaknesses that he was all for his own glamour and had nothing to do with intentions to correct the party which was slowly meandering to the dock.

I made few visits to his house but only when my friends drove me there.

I saw a number of his supporters especially the Biro Tata Negara (BTN) boys were trying to cheer him up and among the many were a group of members who intended to bring UMNO to court to nullify the General Assembly as some of the members who attended the Assembly and voted were illegal.

In actuality, Abdullah was the real man behind the move to bring UMNO to court, but to say this after over 20 years would only cause a lot of interpretations against me. May be one should ask Marina Yusoff for confirmation.

But Radzi Sheikh Ahmad and Rais Yatim were certainly doing all the backings to this group of 11 and finally the case went to court and presided by the Judge late Harun Hashim.

When the group of 11 filed the petition at the High Court, and while waiting for the trial, Sanusi was working hard to talk to the group.

He requested them to withdraw. Sanusi, then the Secretary General of UMNO, knew that the group was to win the case and a chance of going through another process of election was then very imminent.

This was the main worry as Mahathir did not want any more kind of re-election as he would be a definite loser.

Mahathir is not like Hussein. Hussein felt that he couldn’t secure solid support when there is somebody went and contested his Presidency in 1978, and he swiftly decided not to retain the position he won handsomely.

Hussein didn’t want the party to split and respected the spirit of democracy. Conversely, Mahathir was far from gentleman and he took everything as personal and he started to find every bit of space to save his personal self even at the expense of the nation and the people.

The group of 11 were just asking the court to declare that the election to be null and void but in desperation Mahathir went further to defend his position by declaring UMNO as an illegal organization, hence UMNO disappeared instantaneously.

Mahathir rather put the party in demise rather than having to face another round of election. He wanted to continue in power at all costs.

Everybody who understands even a bit of Law was talking legal subjects for a long while.

Many quarters in UMNO reminded him that as he was also the Minister of Home Affairs he had the power to give life to the UMNO by using the Akta Pertubuhan (Seksyen 70). The act provided that a Home Minister can revive any deregistered organization by a stroke of a pen and if he had done it UMNO would have come to life again.

Everyone was shock and astonished to see that Mahathir just refused to used that Act as he may have to face the members by having the second round of election as decided by the High Court Judge Harun Hashim.

He had no love for the party as he only loved himself more than anything else. He didn’t want to sacrifice for the party but he sacrificed the party instead, as long as he can continue in power.

This incident invited a lot of animosities within the party and the split was evident. The party was split into 2 halves as a large number of divisional and branch members were exasperated by the action of Mahathir refusing to use the section 70 of the Societies Act.

The refusal of Mahathir to use the Act to keep the life of UMNO was met by strong resistance from the members.

The quality members who understood what went wrong just refused to follow him to the newly registered party called UMNO (Baru), while those who were nowhere in their leadership at the Division then became leaders at their respected Division and that was when UMNO leadership at all levels were of less quality.

Many who were not supposed to be leaders then became leaders to fill in the vacuum left by leaders who refused to accept Mahathir's decision to change history; by proposing a New UMNO in which he is member no 1 instead of Onn Jaafar as in the original UMNO.

This UMNO (Baru) is an entirely a newly registered party formed in 1988, and it is much younger than even my youngest son.

Out of 26 committee members and officers in my Division in Kuala Pilah, 18 opted to be with me and just refused to be the protem committee of the new UMNO. But some said even if I were to agree with the New UMNO, I wouldn’t be appointed to the protem committee by Tan Sri Isa Samad because of my open disagreement with the decision.

More than half of the Divisional leaders were not appointed to the protem because they were the supporters of the team B.

I went around the country with the other leaders giving speeches attended by tens of thousands of people but more often than not we were stopped from continuing our speeches by the police.

At that point of time I felt like I was living in a total police state. I and Radzi Sheikh Ahmad were met by FRU when we reached Kg Terusan in my hometown and their numbers were not small.

We were not allowed to use loudspeaker to speak to thousands of people who were eager to listen to the truth of what we wanted to say. In my next posting I shall be touching on issue of UMNO (Baru) and UMNO (Lama) in order to make known the significance of the issues to the people and their struggle.

It should be a really interesting issue as many of the young didn’t know. I may be met with strong confrontation but I am prepared to face them because of the truth.

After all, I am a nobody and of no consequence to anybody.


Thanks…………………………………………………………Aspan Alias.

Mahathir the happiest man Part 4

Since the resignation of Musa, Mahathir was pairing fairly well with Ghaffar. Ghaffar was 3 months older than Mahathir and he (Mahathir) didn’t feel the threat as Ghaffar was lacking in many disciplines but he was unmatched when it comes to doing reconciliatory job with the component parties of Barisan Nasional.

Ghaffar had been the Secretary General to BN for decades and he could handled the coalition very well as he was highly regarded by all component parties in BN.

Ghaffar may not be the best material for the Premiership, but he was the best person to be the deputy to Mahathir as he had the wisdom from his decades in politics and had gone through all the mills of it.

I met Ghaffar at his office at Kompleks Kewangan in Wisma Batik when Kak Siti, his secretary gave me the appointment in the morning, days before he was announced as the Deputy Prime Minister.

I went to pay my tribute him as I was working for quite a while in Kompleks Kewangan in which Ghaffar was the Chairman.

I don’t intend to tell or to write what we talked about, but I was wondering who made the promise to him that Mahathir would resign in 1989 and wanting to give a former ordinary teacher (Ghaffar) to be the PM of Malaysia.

In my heart I said “I really don’t understand politics, and whoever gave him the promise must be very mean and totally an impulsive and compulsive liar”. Even though I was just a young boy of 34 I knew it was not going to happen.

In his jest he said, “Saya dengar awak selalu bergaduh dengan Dato’ Mansor dalam mesyuarat jawatan kuasa bahagian, betul ke?” I just gave him short answer, “Betul, tapi saya selalu juga sokong dia; bergantung pada isulah Pak Ghaffar! Mesyuarat macam tulah!”
Anyway I just congratulated him in advance and I saw him smiling which was hard to get from Pak Ghaffar. For a young boy like me then, I had to hard-earned a smile from this veteran leader.

Mahathir and Ghaffar were having better chemistry and like many others, I saluted Ghaffar for being a superb campaigner for the BN in the 1986 General Election when PAS had only won 2 seats against UMNO and this was the best performance of BN.

Having strong presence in Parliament did not mean good for the BN either as the BN especially UMNO representatives in the house were not united. UMNO did not have strong opposition and they became complacent and started intra-politicking among themselves.

As it was, many of the members of Parliament were dejected Musa’s men and so did the cabinet and the Deputy Ministers. Among the staunch supporters of Musa was Abdullah Badawi who was then the Minister of Defense.

Meanwhile Mahathir was acting as he wished and clearly one could witness personal wealth building among politicians in the government was setting in and building up speedily.

From then on Mahathir set in the culture of speedy and express project with direct negotiation and worst of it all many of those projects were not planned and placed it within the Five Year Plan.

Nobody knew about KLIA was to be built as it was not in the 6th Malaysia plan, and we only knew of the project through the mid-term review of the Five Year Plan.

This was when professionalism started to die and even consultants made up with unethical mode of workings. All were just talking about dollars and cents and ignored ethics and norms of managing a developing nation. Professionalism was fast dying in oblivion until today.

The implementers were ripped off from their responsibilities and politicians made decisions on all matters and it has become a negative culture practiced until today.

It is already a culture for any businessman to ask question “Ada line dengan Menteri itu dan Menteri ini tak? I ada project ni, allocation untuk diorang dah ada!”, and we can hear this question everyday and everywhere.

Implementation and Co-ordination Unit (ICU) as well as Economic Planning Unit (EPU) in Prime Minister’s Department was polluted and do not function like it was before. To many, they say that EPU is being made used by leaders with power for benefiting few.

These 2 departments are focusing too much less on development of public at large but only to few individuals and the GLCs.

Since Mahathir's administration till now, we see Malays are compelled to compete with the non-Malays as well as with all Public Companies by Guarantee, now known as GLCs.

While admitting the reasonable successes of most of the GLCs, it is a miserable failure if we look on the premise of its existence i.e. to hold on behalf of and transferring them to Malays and Bumiputra at large.

Mahathir didn’t look at this particular angle; i.e to transfer the equity to the ordinary Bumiputra Public and not through listings whereby the spirit of DEB cannot be realized to the fullest.

To me and to those who agree, the only success of these GLCs is to boost up the ego of a few individuals who became the CEOs and the Directors of these companies.

What they care is just to show the consolidated accounts of companies they are appointed to head but seldom do they show how they play the role in helping the ordinary Bumiputras, the basic conscientiousness as to why these companies were in existence.

These feelings of aggravations were becoming clearer and it was also felt by many in the cabinet. By the time the following General Assembly came by, UMNO was already set to see changes and in 1987 we saw the greatest fight in UMNO’s history when the President post was to be contested.

4 to 5 months before the General Assembly the mood of change was strongly felt everywhere and by November 1986 everyone said that the contest for the no 1 post was already imminent, and there was nothing wrong with that as the constitution allowed for any member to contest any position in the party.

Mahathir knew that someone will contest against him and his reaction to the mood of change really reflected his real him. He looked cooled but his words of response showed clear enough a message that it was time for him to go in order not to break the party.

When asked by the media for his comment, he answered, “I shall fight on, even if I win by one vote, it is still a win”.

The pressure became more intense, UMNO Divisions started nominating and TR and Musa as President and Deputy President respectively.

I attended the first campaign in Seremban when Najib (current PM) was campaigning by saying that Mahathir failed to behave like a father to us UMNO members and therefore there is a need for change.

Najib was all the way with TR/Musa, and when he switched camp 2 days before the General Assembly. Many were disappointed and many knew he had a lot of problems to follow through if he were to remain in the team B as they were called.

Campaign was intense and Mahathir was already very panicky as more than half of the cabinet members were already behind TR/Musa including of course our ‘great’ Abdullah Badawi.

He (Abdullah Badawi) called me quite a number of times to his house, then in Medang Kapas, and to his office in Mindef and asking me and many others to help around in the campaign.

Meanwhile Mahathir was asked again by the media what he would do as the chances of him losing was great, and his answer was, “Even if I loose, I still have parliament to turn to as I am still having the support of Parliament.”.
Everyone knew that answer was right but that was entirely the reverse of his promise when he took over from his predecessor Hussein Onn in 1981, during the summing up speech of the General Assembly.

He said, “Seandainya ada tanda-tanda rakyat tidak menyukai saya, berilah tahu dan saya akan berundur secara terhormat”, and together with other delegates in the Nirwana Ballroom responded to this with the greatest applause. But one of our fellow delegates, the late Raja Dato’ Nong Chik whispered to few of us, “Please don’t believe this man (Mahathir), he is going to get stuck to the chair by the decades".
Mahathir took the challenges by the ‘Team B’ as an unpardonable offence. To him he shouldn’t be contested and the provision that the constitution provided did no good to him. Mahathir did not see that as a part of democracy and he hated it as he was and still is far from a gentleman.

To him the challenge was personal in nature and had nothing to do with intentions of saving the party from going to the dock like what we are facing today. He thought everybody was like him.

All along the campaign, the 2 living ex-Premier, Tunku and Hussein Onn were all out for the team B as they believed Mahathir was going to bring UMNO to catastrophe. Hussein in one of his lines of words said, “Sesalan saya besar kerana mengambil Mahathir sebagai pengganti saya”.

Tunku Abdul Rahman campaigned hard albeit, his old aged but I couldn’t remember what he said as I have forgotten totally as to the content of his supporting speeches.

The support of these 2 ex-PM were very close to perfect reasoning as to why Mahathir should be replaced then and chances of us making a wrong decision in challenging the President post was very remote.

By the time the General Assembly came by, Mahathir took up the nominations to maintain himself as the President and Ghaffar Baba as the Deputy in his team. On the other side, TR singed up to challenge the Presidency while Musa signed up to maintain his Deputy President post.

Mahathir won the contest by a very slim majority of 43, while Musa failed to maintain the no 2 seat by majority of 40 to Ghaffar Baba.

The heightening adversities in UMNO did not end there as the complications were so mountable and UMNO looked like it is going to end.

While TR had resigned a day before the contest, the rest of team B leaders who won the seats in the Supreme Council did not resign from their government posts and I shall write on it in my next posting.


Thanks…………………………………………………………..Aspan Alias

Mahathir the happiest man Part 3

As I have numerously said in my words and writings, Mahathir only wants to see things to happen the way he personally likes.

To him the whole nation is his and he is the only person who has the right of everything and the rest must obey him without questions. His policy is, ‘Just do what I ask you to do, and don’t do what I do'.

During his long tenure of power he quarreled with everyone except his wife,children and Daim Zainuddin only for reasons he personally understands.

Anyone, whom he sees to be encumbering his moves, will get his battering without mercy.

Musa was very perturbed and disillusioned with the way Mahathir conducted his administration on this nation. He was cornered from every angle and he knew he was not going anywhere any further anymore.

He wrote a letter to Mahathir on the sly expressing his displeasure to Mahathir for re-appointing TR to the cabinet despite losing for the second time in 1984. Putting TR to the Ministry of Trade didn’t reduce TR’s influence in Malaysian politics which Musa truly abhorred.

Mahathir distributed copies of those letters 3 years after when Musa and TR went against him in 1987 purely as an attempt to split them.

The newly appointed Daim did not listen to Musa even though at one point Musa was acting Prime Minister while Mahathir was on leave.

(Musa had the weakness of claiming to be the acting PM even though Mahathir just went abroad for less than a week)

Daim did not even give Musa a token regards as Deputy PM and this was the immediate reason beside many others why Musa decided to resign in February 1986 as Deputy PM and there was a great wave of shocks nationwide.

To Daim he had only one person whom he is answerable to; i.e Mahathir and none others. He was and still is, never a politician; he was a taukeh in the cabinet line-up.

In a matter of months Daim did his job with his own freewill and he did things without any reprimand from Mahathir.

The billions of cash that TR left to him when he took over the UMNO Treasurer was until today not known to anyone as to where the monies went to.

Daim was just focusing on deals that benefited him only and I remember there were lots of talk about the issue of UMBC Rights issue for PERNAS, which I can write on another day.

For all these treacherous and perfidious actions by Daim with concurrence of Mahathir, Musa decided to step down as Deputy PM but maintained the Deputy President of UMNO in early 1986.

Musa sent in the resignation letter to Mahathir and copies were sent to every Supreme Council member and he left for umrah after which he went to London and rested his toiling mind quietly in that metropolitan city.

The resignation of Musa resulted in a total change in political landscape especially in UMNO and could clearly saw the animosities nationwide and it ignited a lot of reactions from the public.

Tunku Abdul Rahman came in with magnanimous suggestions for Mahathir to call for emergency UMNO General Assembly as it is too warranting as the person who resigned was the Deputy President of UMNO.

The Tunku made it clear that Mahathir must get the feelings and feedbacks from the delegates to avoid possible major split in the party.

Mahathir was adamant not to call for the emergency general assembly as he was dead scared the delegates might unanimously called for reinstatement of Musa to the position and that would make Musa very strong and could even cost him the Premiership.

In fact a few from Musa’s camp revealed that Musa resigned from the position in the hope that emergency meeting would be called to politically enhanced his strength in UMNO and used that as the platform to oust Mahathir.

Mahathir immediately appointed a veteran and Vice President Ghaffar Baba as deputy PM, who was then not in the cabinet.

Ghaffar resigned in 1976 when he was discontented with the appointment of Mahathir as Deputy PM by Hussein Onn after the death of Tun Abdul Razak.

Mahathir entirely ignored the calls for Special Assembly of UMNO to address Musa’s resignation issue and repeatedly said, “I have accepted his resignation”.

From then onwards I visually saw groups from all over the country visiting Musa as soon as he came back from a quiet leave after his resignation.

From this point Mahathir realized that he barely could control the mood against him from Musa’s group of supporters and as expected by everybody Musa was not quiet politically.

His boys like Shahrir Samad, Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, Zainal Abidin Zain, Abdullah Badawi, Ajib Ahmad, Rahmah Osman and many others were seen always in touch with each other and God knew what they talked and planned about their politics.

His boys were all around trying to aggravate dissenting opinion on Mahathir and the pressure on Mahathir was quite clear and move to see Mahathir be tested was clear.

In the meanwhile, TR has never been lonely as he was visited by many loyal divisional leaders since he lost the 1981 and 1984 fights for Deputy President.

TR had good and loyal friends all over the country and they always came in with latent discontents against the new culture in UMNO which made them feel so depressed.

So in short both Musa and TR’s camp were mutually having the same feelings of discontent against top party leadership.

Both camps somehow realized that they were made tools and fooled by Mahathir who loved his position so much to the extent of sacrificing the party.

Many realized that Musa and TR were not genuine enemies but both were common victims of Mahathir’s political maneuvers.

The sequence of events after this point was so appealing that the space and time for this chapter has to be written in the next series of my posting.


Thanks……………………………………………………………… Aspan Alias

Mahathir the happiest man Part 2

Mahathir has been reading, studying and digesting the Malay mind very intensely. So intense that he could maneuver them to an extent that Malays take him as a hero without even realizing they are being deceived and follow through his dubious intend and motives.

After the 1981 big fight for Deputy President, Mahathir had the initial grip on UMNO when he balanced the TR/Musa factor. Musa was all out to make his existence felt as he was there as Deputy by the will of Mahathir.

Musa was not at all happy that TR was in the line-up again but was not showing as appointing TR as the Finance Minister was on the unanimous call from the delegates and wishes of men on the ground.

The defeat of TR was taken sorely by the public as he was the man who had done too much for the Bumiputra in the efforts of economic re-engineering of the rakyat as stipulated in the New Economic Policy which was well accepted by the people including the Non-Malays.

The ism of TR was everywhere; banking sector, commerce, politics and the public sector as he was looked upon as the de facto Prime Minister in the eyes of every Malaysian during Hussein Onn’s administration.

TR was hands on over every government project for the Malays and Bumiputra and he did his job well and accepted by the people, as there were no element of corruption and cronyism and everything he proposed and implemented gave direct impact on the people especially among the Malays and Bumiputra.

Mahathir didn’t want to appoint Musa directly as his Deputy as what has been traditionally practiced by previous Prime Minister. He did not want to have Musa to be appointed directly as he was worried Musa might have solid support from the grassroots which he was unsure of Musa allegiance to him.

He chose to witness Musa going through the severe contest with TR and to him this could be a good balancing factor for him to maintain comforts on the PM’s seat. Mahathir wanted the two factions continuously in adversity so as the 2 power men would always be put at bay.

Musa in the meanwhile was all out to make his presence felt and he started doing things which was out of norms such as using Biro Tata Negara (BTN) as his personal political tools and this irritated a lot of people including Mahathir and members of UMNO who were leaned to TR.

Musa managed to place his men to important positions among them Shahril Samad as the full minister and getting Ajib Ahmad who was too junior to be the MB of Johore to ensure good footing for him in his home state of Johore.

Musa unceremoniously sidelined Muhammat Rahmat, Jalal Abu Bakar and a few others whom he was not comfortable with.

Mahathir looked at Musa’s action as threatening but he didn’t have much worries as he knew TR was going for another round of contest for the Deputy President against Musa in 1984 and that contest would tire Musa up to the optimum.

With that contest Mahathir knew Musa would never be able to force him out as he (Musa) was not having rock-hard support from members and delegates.

Mahathir expectation was right as TR still managed to secure more than 500 votes out of 1200 delegates; a formidable support as underdog against Musa who enjoyed the total support from Mahathir in this second round of contest.

TR was once again in the cabinet line-up but was given the task to lead the Ministry of Trade replacing Tengku Ahmad Rethauddin while TR’s position in the Ministry of Finance was given to famous (to some people as notorious) Daim.

Having TR and Daim in the line-up annoyed Musa a great deal and he then realized he was just made to be the tool of Mahathir and he found it too hard to manage the new culture of materialism that had slowly crept in UMNO.

From this point Mahathir had his free hand to do anything he wished as TR was no more in the Finance Ministry. Since then the culture in UMNO latently changed and materialism slowly became the order of the day.

Musa rhetoric on nationalism became blunted and TR’s focus and effort to transfer the wealth that the government owned to the Bumiputras was curtailed and Mahathir slowly dismantled the New Economic Policy that was too dear to the heart of TR and the Malays.

Daim took the office of Finance Minister and his first task was to sack the Governor of Bank Negara Tan Sri Aziz Taha as he was not comfortable with strict laws and ethics of administrations.

Since then, Mahathir and Daim made decisions on ad-hoc basis and all Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) were not adhered to any longer. Administering the country was nothing more and nothing less like managing a simple Kubang Pasu Sepak Takraw Committee Members.

Mahathir enjoyed the splits in UMNO as he can only survive his politics if there were big crisis in the party. Mahathir couldn’t survive politically if there were unity among members and leaders under him.

Express gigantic projects became norms and all were decided on ad-hoc manner and he didn’t address all possible problems that may follow as consequences of his hasty decisions.

Mahathir was so focus on Mega Projects and he wanted it to be done fast and by doing so the country had to import capital goods in haste and that spiral the costs. This man didn’t bother the negative impact on our current account which in the end weakened our ringgit.

No one was supposed to criticize him then; whoever tried to think in dissimilarity with him would be taken to task.

He went head on with the basic and cardinal struggles of UMNO to create hundreds of thousand of millionaires but instead he went on negotiating Mega Jobs which were in only in the interest of 4 or 5 beneficiaries to be the billionaires.

The successes of economic management by TR in creating large number of middle class among the Malays are slowly depleting and when the economic down spiral sets in the middle class are the ones who suffer the most.

All costs of those mega projects were exorbitantly high and the rakyat had and still pay for the costs through their nose.

It will be very interesting to reminisce this abhorring history which is still new.

Mahathir himself in his blog wants everybody to read history as it is an important subject for the people to learn past mistakes; and this is just what I want to do; write a bit of history which I personally know without making even a bit of research.

Anyone is free to contest my opinion but what I am doing is nothing more than putting it on writing of what I see.

If anyone agrees with me, just recite for me Al-Fatihah if I am no more living then.

See you in few days for the following series.


Thanks……………………………………………………… Aspan Alias

Mahathir the happiest man Part 1

Najib is now the President of UMNO while Muhyiddin is his Deputy and that is what Dr Mahathir wanted all the way since he broke off the talking line with Abdullah Badawi since 2006.

Dr Mahathir has rejoined UMNO as he is not complaining much about the current political circumstances; he only has persona non grata with Abdullah and Khairy, and that was apparently the only reason why he helped UMNO to hell.

What he cares is only his wants and greed, and anything short he would damage the government and even the party.

In actuality Dr Mahathir is not that choosy about the right attribute of a leader to rule the nation in a proper manner.

Dr Mahathir is just like any ordinary member’s mentality and that is where and why Dr Mahathir feels so comforting having Najib to be the leader and deputized by Muhyiddin.

To Dr Mahathir his missions are accomplished except with diminutive disappointment over his son’s defeat in the contest for UMNO youth head to his arch rival’s son-in-law, Khairy; and that made him to decide not to attend the UMNO General Assembly in protest on the 26th March.

Unlike many on the street, Mahathir does not really bother to see Najib as a clean leader as his concern is to see Abdullah’s political demise and succeeded by some one whom he can turn and curve with.

He cares nothing for the people and to give a damn with the country’s political danger and I don’t think I can be wrong to say that he has a bit of a migrant mentality.

By days, weeks and months I personally see the real Dr Mahathir and if I can be permitted to say a line of Malay proverb, “saya sudah boleh menyelam air dalam tunggak” about this man who is very laudable to the eyes of the deceived lots.

Dr Mahathir is not irked or chagrined by stories written by major and mainstream newspapers worldwide about alleged involvement of Najib in the Altantuya Sharibuu’s murder case which is an automatic disqualification for ostentatious man to be the Prime Minister of this great nation if he does not come out in the open to clean his image and name.

He must go to courts and be firmly courageous enough to deny those allegations and sue those writers and if luck is with him he may even earn some clean money, the thing which he loves most.

Many expected Dr Mahathir to use his influence and get Najib to be on his toes and just do what he should in cleaning up his severely dented image.

Let us all see things objectively and agree among ourselves that with this extent of allegation against a Prime Minister of our sovereign nation, it is unbearable and if he continues to chicken out in this issue he has only one choice; that is to resign from all party and government positions and live in repentance.

Dr Mahathir in actual fact wants Muhyiddin to be the PM and he knows Najib’s credibility is at the lowest ebb and to him Najib may soon have to leave the position and give smooth passage for Muhyiddin to be the successor.

Dr Mahathir is truly an expert in mind game and also a good deceiver. History tells clearly he could deceive the whole UMNO members and leaders that other people were responsible for the demise of our original UMNO..... and almost everyone believed his cock and bull stories.

Dr Mahathir’s superb communication skills made him looked nationalist. He was the master planner to insubordinate Tun Husein Onn while he was the deputy to Husein and making use of forlorn and dejected Harun’s supporters which consequentially upstaged Sulaiman Palestine to contest against Husein’s position as the Party President.

Husein in the end announced that he was not defending his position in 1981. Hussein realized that he didn’t have the full support of members as somebody was expediently using discontented Harun’s supporters to insubordinate him from inside his trusted men around him.

The moment Husein announced his intention not to defend his position as UMNO President in 1981, the process of ostracizing Tengku Razaleigh begun as morally he was supposed to deputize Dr Mahathir when this man became the Prime Minister.

This was where Musa Hitam came in as he was one of those who felt edgy if TR became the Deputy to Mahathir. Mahathir was not at ease to have TR to deputize him as he was worried that TR may outshine him.

Both Musa and Mahathir were exceedingly discontented seeing TR were glamorously known and famous as he was recognized worldwide and the world made him the Chairman of World Bank in 1977 to 1982, the first person outside USA to sit on the chair.

Mahathir was not cheerful seeing Husein Onn giving all trust and important functions in managing the nation to TR especially in managing the nation’s economy especially in restructuring and reengineering economic distribution which was the core activity for the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Finally Mahathir got what he wanted; not to have anyone bright to be his Deputy and Musa sat on the chair of Deputy Prime Minister and he became the stop-gap partner of Mahathir until he found all excuses to displace Musa 5 years after.

Meanwhile TR was still maintained as the Minister of Finance as well as the Treasurer of UMNO as the delegates appealed for his continuous role in national politics and he held those positions until June 1984 when our great Daim came in to substitute him.

To Mahathir this was also an excellent opportunity for him to balance the new power man, Musa whom he has not trusted fully; Musa was just used to unseat the power man TR and subsequently made TR to check on the new uncharacteristic Musa.

Mahathir just sat pretty and save on the PM’s seat while watching his 2 pawns’ rivalry maintained at certain height.

Let me continue writing in series about Mahathir in my next writing. Let me write in series to see how Mahathir played his game until he managed to be on the helm of power for 22 years.

Please bear in mind that his personal successes were too costly for UMNO and the nation and the current adversities in Malaysian politics is definitely the consequence of his knifing politics which he enriched when he came to power.

See you in days, for 2 or 3 series of Mahathir’s successes in his personal politics which all were at the expenses of the nation and all deceived Malaysians.


Thanks……………………………………....Aspan Alias