Istana type intrigues

The Malaysian Insider - MCA, DAP flay BTN, demand punishment for ‘racist’ official.

If PM Najib doesn’t watch out, by the time he returns, Muhyiddin will be the puppet PM with someone pulling the strings.

While the two school principals might have been indiscreetly spontaneous in their racist outbursts, I doubt the BTN deputy director Hamim Husain would have dared, in the immediate wake of the school scandals, to act so unbelievably racist without a wink and a nod from above.

It’s obvious ‘someone’ is deliberately escalating the racial tension to either create another situation for a possible Ops Lallang 2 and/or perhaps even declare some form of national security emergency to delay the general election and buy time for BN, or to depose Najib off swiftly in the way AAB was deposed.

Once I was discussing Malay politics with a Chinese friend when he exclaimed how the Malay body politics was so full of intrigues, Machiavellian manoeuvrings and, contrary to perrenial Malay proclamations of how much they treasure loyalty, full of treachery.

Notable events would be the history of the Sultanates from early Malacca right down to present day Kelantan – and how Tun Razak conducted a coup d’etat against a broken hearted Tunku.

He then reminded me on how Dr Mahathir, one of the longest serving PMs and probably the most influential voice in Malay politics, was so effectively boycotted and marginalized by AAB’s 4th Floor boys and worse, unconscionably betrayed by a host of his erstwhile Kedah sidekicks (Baharum, Aroff, etc) who had benefitted during his reign and from his generous largess.

In other words there is no such thing as loyalty in Malay politics – that value perished together with Hang Jebat in the 15th Century.

He commented on how infantile Chinese body politics in this country is by comparison, and attributed the depth of Machiavellian Malay political manoeuvrings to their history of and experience in palace intrigues.

I protested that Chinese too had their share of palace intrigues, perhaps even of a worse kind, but he pooh-pooh-ed me off, saying the Chinese who migrated to Malaysia were the politically naive Southerners, basically peasants and not the more politically devious Northerners, who dominated royalty, court nobility and palace courtiers.

Chinese Malaysians are children of peasant stock? Wakakaka.

OK, back to Malaysia - I have to admit that for a while I thought Dr M would still hutang budi the late Tun Razak and thus tolerate if not mentor his son Najib to stay on as PM until the latter’s time for retirement, but now I wonder?

There's no doubt Dr M doesn't like the way Najib is going. Has he decided to get rid of the PM before the latter's politico-economic policies screw up the future for his son?

If that's the case, how long can Najib hang on?