Dr Mahathir Told AAB to Quit

The real 'shooting' has started. Things have gone bloody ugly in UMNO.

At a press conference at Universiti Teknologi Petronas in Tronoh, Perak, Dr Mahathir has called upon his hand-picked successor AAB to quit his prime ministerial post.

The Grand Ole Man said: “If we have a prime minister who sold the country, why wait for five years? We have to take early action. If he sold the country, there’s no need to wait five years. We must not always say we support the prime minister.”

This is serious stuff! Consider – Mahathir has accused PM AAB of selling off Malaysia, obviously in a reference to his earlier accusation of AAB’s government giving in to Singapore.

What had seemingly sparked off Mahathir’s wrath against AAB had been the abandonment of the ‘scenic’ bridge project. He accused the government of ‘kowtowing’ to Singapore and failed to protect national interests. He alluded to greed among some UMNO personalities that had resulted in the project cancellation.

Early he had limited his anger and allegations to Khairy Jamaluddin, and only criticised AAB for allowing his son-in-law to exercise disproportionate unofficial powers. But this time he has gone for AAB’s jugular, despite his earlier statement he had no intention of overthrowing the prime minister.

Maybe AAB, having anticipated the MM-escalation, had called for the tightening up of media outlets, especially those on the Internet as Mahathir would relying on this medium to send his message of criticism and condemnation.

However, Mahathir carefully qualified his criticisms. He assured UMNO die-hards that he was not criticising UMNO in his on-going spat with Abdullah. He said: “I’ve never criticise UMNO in my speeches. I only criticised the leader who swayed away from the wishes of UMNO.”

He said that during his time he didn’t bar his UMNO competitors from challenging him, referring to Ku Li, Musa Hitam and AAB: “I was challenged until I almost lost, yet UMNO remained strong ... We are not condemning UMNO, we are condemning the leadership who are not following the party’s principles and struggles.”

Then he took another potshot (lots of shooting recently) at Khairy Jamaluddin, who last week vowed to answer the allegations against him including his multi-million ringgit purchase of shares in boutique investment bank, ECM-Libra.

Dr Mahathir scoffed: “What’s there to answer? He’s not answering. Where did he get RM 9 million? He said he borrowed from friends. Who are his friends whom he can borrow as much as RM9 million? I, too, would like to borrow ...”

Gee, I wonder whether he read my posting Khairy Jamaluddin - Questions on his Loans and borrowed my query, that Khairy should explain how he obtained his loan so that we may all emulate his skills at securing such a humongous one?

Dr Mahathir said: “There are some in UMNO Youth who also would like to borrow RM 9 million to buy ECM-Libra shares. Can they go and take a loan? Why did his friends give him the loan? Even if we want to get a loan from the bank, can we go borrow RM9 million to buy ECM-Libra shares?”

As I remarked in my earlier posting Khairy Jamaluddin - Questions on his Loans, AAB who spoke out in defence of Khairy, like Khairy, didn’t explain how in the world did a company, ECM-Libra, merely loan out RM 9.2 millions to a 31-year old bloke to buy the shares of the same company?