Dr M’s ethos vs Najib’s ethos

Dr M’s ethos vs Najib’s ethos



From Terence Netto

Presently, there are two ethos vying for electoral support in the national political arena.

One is Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s which holds that the country would be in terminal danger should kleptocrats be endorsed in the Johor state polls on March 12.

The other ethos is Najib Razak’s which holds that he is more victim than perpetrator of a convoluted financial scheme (1MBD) in which four judges have already found him guilty.

Despite two verdicts against him, Najib walks around like he has done nothing wrong.

What’s more, some Malaysians appear to root for him, judging from their reception to his public appearances and responses on social media in which the former prime minister enjoys an outsized presence.

Mahathir, who has denounced this adulation as shameful, professes to be appalled by the spectacle.

He ought not to be: he was the principal contributor to this revaluation of values from which Najib appears to be benefiting.

During his lengthy first tenure and during his shorter second stint as prime minister, Mahathir espoused a subversive perspective in which he was more concerned with eroding the distinctions between true and false, valid and invalid, real and imaginary.

His political craft being Machiavellian, a concern for truth mattered less than gaining success for his moves.

As ever, to him, success is its own absolution.

In his jousts with detractors over the Salleh Abbas issue and with ACA chief Shafee Yahya, Mahathir’s twists and turns had observers wondering why an intelligent man like him – on such grave issues as judicial independence and the fight against corruption – seemed unconcerned with the noxious atmosphere he was fomenting by doing what he did and
saying what he said, in justification.

That toxicity would boomerang badly on people’s ability to sift right from wrong, as is happening now in the case of Najib’s alleged shenanigans as prime minister.

Mahathir and Umno had long dumbed down badly on the electorate, thinking the latter are better off not knowing than being informed and enlightened.

Plato’s allegory of the cave, of people being allowed to see only shadows is an explanation of why many Malaysians are not concerned with the rights and wrongs concerning the 1MDB issue.

The upshot: presently, many Malaysians think of Najib as benefactor rather than as what two levels of the judiciary have already found: that he is a felon.

The victim rather than perpetrator aura that Najib projects is abetted by the fact that for a couple of years from his taking over the premiership in April 2009, he attempted a measure of liberalisation to the economic and social regimen he inherited.

Mahathir, employing the Malay right wing group, Perkasa, threw cold water on the measures and deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin – he of the “I’m Malay first” stance – also helped to undermine the effort.

Impeded by reactionaries, Najib began to think of ways around the roadblocks.

One contrivance was 1MDB but that has only led him to a quagmire.

Presently, his victim pose will wash with those who remember the liberalising moves of his early days as premier and his munificence as initiator of BRIM.

But where it has to have any effect, on his liberty, is in the courts. Thus far that has not happened.

It’s best he not deploy his electoral popularity as a shield against his legal trammels.

That way, he will do more damage to the country than Mahathir has already done with his pernicious Machiavellianism.


Terence Netto is a senior journalist and FMT reader.