The headline in The Sunday Star screams, ‘Stronger now for the next polls’. Has Najib Abdul Razak not heard the expression, ‘Pride cometh before a fall’?
He has two powerful weapons. It is for Malaysians to destroy them.
Does one measure political strength by the ability to jail the leader of the Bersih movement, Maria Chin Abdullah? The 60-year-old mother of three was detained in a police raid, and placed in solitary confinement, on the eve of the Bersih 5 march. This is the power Najib gloats about, in his futile attempt to demoralise pro-democracy rally-goers.
Contrast the treatment accorded to the son of the vainglorious MP, Tajuddin Abdul Rahman, who allegedly rioted in the parliament compound. The police pleaded with him to give himself up. No black marias. No all-points bulletin issued. No crack police team sent to apprehend the Umno Baru thugs.
This is the Umno Baru which festers under Najib’s rule; boorish, ill-mannered and lacking morals. Young Umno Baru Malays who have no respect for the institutions of parliament.
They do things differently in Umno Baru. By their definition, their measure of ‘strength’ is the ability to arrest cartoonist Zunar, as he opened his exhibition in Penang. His work was thrashed by thugs, from Umno Baru. Apparently the same gang which stormed the Penang state assembly in 2014.
Najib’s strength is shown by the arrest of student leaders, with vice-chancellors suspending their students for their involvement in the Tangkap MO1 protest, or for joining Bersih.
The hypocrisy of it all. Najib villifies students, but as a university undergraduate, Najib was said to be involved in Malaysian student organisations in England.
Apart from allegedly using the state machinery, like the inspector-general of police (IGP), the civil service and the judiciary, to do his bidding, Najib has one other secret weapon to control Muslims, in particular the Malays. That secret weapon is the PAS president, Hadi Awang.
When Najib has bad news to hide, Hadi’s hudud bill is used to maximum effect. Last week, the bad news was Maria’s detention.
Najib employs Hadi’s islamic credentials to put the fear of God in Malays. Hadi does have his uses after all.
Remember Najib’s last scare, in May? The Wall Street Journal revealed that Good Star Limited was owned by Jho Low. Several hundred millions of ringgits of taxpayer’s money had been sent to Good Star, and then redirected to Najib’s personal account.
The distraction was provided by Hadi’s hudud bill, when Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman Said moved the bill from the bottom of the list to the top of the pile.
With her legal and ministerial background, Azalina should have known that this bill goes against the Federal Constitution.
Instead of standing up against the male bullies in parliament, she did as they bade her.
Social media is perhaps the only place Malaysians can voice their frustrations easily. When the nation vented their outrage against the hudud bill on social media, Azalina performed a perfect U-turn. She then claimed that the PM and DPM had ordered her to push forward the bill.