Najib & Ku Li partnership?

Bakri Musa wrote an article titled ‘Salvaging Najib’ which sounds to me like ‘Savaging Najib’ wakakaka.

Bakri is a very erudite writer but one who has broken the hearts of many Chinese Malaysians including mine. For such an intelligent and supposedly 'exposed' person he has been shamefully biased in his dislike of Chinese, and unforgivably careless and ignorant in attributing their worst points to Confucian ethics and their ethnic culture and characteristics. Be that as it may, I still enjoy reading his articles, except when he made those ignorant and indiscriminate accusations against Chinese (like sweeping every Chinamen down with one long bamboo pole).

As to be expected his articles in the main focused on Malays and Malay issues, and most certainly we can learn from them. From my regular reading of his articles, I gather the impression (and I believe I’m very correct in this) that his idols are Tun Razak, Dr Ismail, Tun Ghazalie Shafie and Tengku Razaleigh (Ku Li), the Malay political giants. At one time (long ago) I noted that he included Tun Dr Mahathir but lately Bakri has consigned the doctor to the group that he (Bakri) is embarrassed of.

To cut to the chase, he drew the top UMNO teamship of Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tun Razak as a model for Najib to emulate, a partnership of the charismatic but intellectual lightweight Tunku and his deputy, the intellectual giant and visionary Razak.

To Bakri, Najib is like Tunku, not an intellectual giant but easy-going and perhaps even hedonistic to an extent, who needs an intellectual deputy like his late dad, Tun Razak, as a partner to shore up the substance of the current UMNO top partnership.

I’m not too sure about Tun Razak as an intellectual - Dr Ismail and Ghazali Shafie certainly, but Razak ...? No, I respectfully disagree.

But Tun Razak had street-wise cunning, certainly ruthlessness, and leadership qualities but then we are talking about a period when the body politics for the Malays were fairly simple and uncomplicated. Immediately after Independence there weren’t many highly educated Malays, with some of the UMNO leadership and public servants being the exception.

There were of course the well educated young Turks like Dr Mahathir, Ku Li, Musa Hitam and civil servant Ghazali Shafie etc but they were precisely what they were, young Turks and not yet in the top leadership. Tun Razak’s strength was in recruiting them to groom as future UMNO leaders.

Some ministers in Tunku’s cabinet had very basic educational qualifications but surprisingly they were in the main quite good leaders (being old-fashion street smart with a feel for the rakyat), in contrast to today’s UMNO so-called leaders where many are PhD holders but utterly f*-up politicians whose only hold on power, popularity and claimed persona has been based on pathetic pariah provovcative Perkasa-ish polemics and policies.

Naturally in the intellectual department, Bakri deemed Najib’s top team partner, Muhyiddin, not up to scratch and should be dumped (or sidelined into a cushy job as a golden handshake).

Bakri toyed with the idea of a younger chap as a new partner for Najib, like Khairy Jamaluddin (which choice initially surprised me) but then only briefly before he dismissed the young buck for the excessive baggage acquired during his father-in-law's time ;-)

This of course led Bakri to what he really wanted to propose in the first place, namely his idol Ku Li as Najib’s new DPM. This was hardly surprising as Bakri had previously proposed Ku Li to be AAB’s DPM.

Of course the late Tun Razak and Dr Ismail were long gone or Bakri would have asked for them to come back. And dear Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie was (during AAB’s tenure) far too old to be drafted or that true intellectual would have been a sure choice too. I too would have supported the choice of the late Tan Sri.

I doubt Najib will want Ku Li for a variety of reasons, chief among which would be Ku Li as a ‘clear & present danger’ to him, an inevitable challenger for his own position as PM.

Besides, Ku Li is hardly likely to tolerate having young chico Najib as a boss, who was probably in diapers when he (Ku Li) was already in the UMNO top leadership - okay, I exaggerate a bit on the 'diapers' bit but the contrast in their respective seniority and experience is far too embarrassing (and even humiliating) for Ku Li to remain as deputy to a budak kecil like Najib for too long. Remember that top leaders have monstrously humongous egos.

With Tun Razak’s coup d’etat immediately post May 13, when he betrayed and humiliated Tunku (there were other humiliations of Tunku subsequently), the vaunted loyalty of Malays in general and UMNO in particular were left by the wayside.

Today Tun Razak’s son faces imminent threats from every which direction - Muhyiddin, Ali Rustam (who’s more popular in UMNO than Muhyiddin and who would have been DPM if not for a wee ‘inconvenience’), and a host of many others including younger bucks like Khairy Jamaluddin.

Will the sin of the father be visited upon his son? Well, they say history repeats itself!