Mahathir the happiest man Part 6

The New UMNO was formed in February 1988 and Mahathir was member no 1 while Kak Hasmah was member no 2 and followed by Ghaffar, Anwar, Najib, Abdullah and the rest of the first group of the protem committee at the Federal Level.

Crudely speaking the New UMNO is much younger than my youngest son.

It simply means that a large number of old UMNO members were listed in the New UMNO and there were massive crossovers from the dead UMNO to the newly-registered party, which used the household name, UMNO.

So it would not be fair at all to call Datuk Ibrahim Ali a frog as most of the current leaders of UMNO and its members are nothing more and nothing less frogs themselves…and the chief of all frogs is none other than Mahathir.

Many were shock in disbelief and couldn’t comprehend that Mahathir did not used the Societies Act 1965 section 70 to give life again to the original UMNO if he really meant what he preached.

Meanwhile our losing group was not losing hope and we went to the Supreme Court arbitration and hope to get the old UMNO revived.

We knew anything less than reviving the old UMNO will bring a big split among the Malays as they have lost their premise for their struggles.

As this issue was really very significant in nature, especially for the Malay's struggles and for every Malaysian, Tun Salleh, the Lord President then decided to get all the 9 Supreme Court Judges to preside on the case and this made Mahathir and group’s mind in disorder.

By any legal calculation, UMNO were to be revived through the Supreme Court and Mahathir were prepared to do anything as long as the original UMNO continue to be in demise, as this UMNO would encumber his desire to stay in power.

“Killing the old UMNO is as good as killing the nerves of the Malays,” shouted the late Cik Gu Kahar the UMNO chief of Muar in one of his speeches.

“Saya tidak akan menyertai parti yang dipunyai secara peribadi oleh Mahathir. UMNO yang Mahathir wujudkan ini adalah atas perpecahan Melayu sedangkan UMNO asal ditubuhkan berdasarkan kepada penyatuan Melayu yang mewakili berbagai-bagai pertubuhan,” he said in enrage.

Cik Gu Kahar and many others died not as an UMNO member, together with other great sons of the soil like Tunku Abdul Rahman and Hussein Onn.

Mahathir was not happy with Tun Salleh for deciding to get all the 9 Supreme Court Judges on the bench; he wanted to teach the Head of Judiciary how to do his job and this was the beginning of encroachment and invasion of the Judiciary by the Executive.

Lord President was called and was politely told to only have 3 on the bench, the Judges preferred by Mahathir. Pressing for the resignation of Tun Salleh was not possible as he could only be ousted by his brother Judges.

The only alternative Mahathir had been to advise the King to set up a Tribunal to sack the innocent Lord President.

Mahathir went all out to find slip-ups in Tun Salleh to be expediently used to expel him before the Supreme Court preside on the appeal by some UMNO members to revive the party.

Mahathir was prepared to do anything, as long as the old UMNO is not revived; even to the extent of putting the Judiciary on trial.

The revival of the old UMNO risked him the position as the PM. He knew he was at the lowest ebb of support and he needed to bring everybody to a new party which he could control.

The Tribunal was set up in haste and finally it was set up on the first of May 1988, and today is the exact day of the setting up of the said Tribunal; the Labor Day and a Public holiday and worsts of it all it was on a Sunday.

A thinking person with a bit of grey matter can conclusively deduce who Mahathir was then by looking at the date and the day the Tribunal was set up.

To cut this part of the story short, Tun Salleh was unceremoniously sacked as the Lord President and the move by majority of UMNO members was stopped. Besides Tun Salleh, 5 other Supreme Court Judges became the victim.

Meanwhile Mahathir was busy organizing his new party and big names that he detested like The Tunku, Tun Hussein Onn and Tengku Razaleigh were sidelined and they were barred from joining the party.

Tunku Abdul Rahman then advised and requested TR to set a temporary party in order to cordon this unhappy group from joining the opposition parties and that was how Semangat 46 came into being in the hope that they would be united again when the political temperature came back to normal.

Semangat 46 was just an alternative name for the old UMNO as the constitutions of the party was 100 percent the constitution of the deregistered party by comas and full stop.

We were not allowed to use UMNO as the name of the party as that name was taken away by the new party that Mahathir had just formed.

Using Semangat 46, TR and the group went to Parliament to get the old UMNO to revive but it was instantaneously rejected by the House as we didn’t have the numbers.

Semangat 46 never relented in the effort to get old UMNO to be revived as that was the only party that could unite the members to continue the struggles for the Malays.

After failing the efforts through the court and Parliament, Semangat 46 then went to the people through the General Election in 1990.

Semangat 46 in its manifesto promised to revive the old UMNO if the people were to give them mandate, but the media went all out against the party as they were already under the grip of Mahathir.

We, in Semangat 46 were not able to secure sympathy from the unprofessional mainstream media; instead were unfeelingly bashed by them almost every moment.

The election result went to the favor of BN/the new UMNO and Mahathir had the grip of the situation but the split did not go away.

The slogan ‘Bersih, Cekap, Amanah’ remained a slogan. There was no Bersih, no Cekap and no Amanah in the government.

Mahathir hard hit criticisms on Abdullah’s administration as corrupt was fair but the corrupt practices at this length could not have been developed within 5 years of Abdullah’s administration.

Corruption to this extent must have been developed in at least 2 decades and Mahathir should also take accountability for this unhealthy and heinous practices.

What Abdullah failed miserably was to combat the massive corrupt practices that he inherited from Mahathir’s administration.

Mahathir meanwhile was on the alert at all time to find anything that may lie on in way that might be of hindrance to him politically.

To him politics is mighty, and to much extent he made believed that everybody was not above law except UMNO with him as the leader.

He had another encumbrance which was not finished, that was the Malay Ruler; which he had earlier in 1983 initiated to curtail their power in a small Constitutional Crisis.

However, the height of the Constitutional Crisis at last came in 1993; and it started when Tengku Majid of Johore hit one of the hockey coaches whom I have forgotten his name.

This occurrence came by as an expedient device for Mahathir to go for another round of war against the rulers.

Oh yes, I have isolated comments against me and 1 of them said that I was writing shit. But he did not elaborate which part of my writing is shit.

What I wrote were all in the mainstream media when the incidences happened and I am merely reminding everyone as it is important for one to know the truth.

The shenanigans of Mahathir in Malaysian politics are not small. Bear in mind that the current adversities in Malaysian political ambience originated from his administration.

I shall try to elaborate the issue probably in the next 1 or 2 postings after this.


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

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