How is the Najib Addendum saga actually perceived by the public ?

How is the Najib Addendum saga actually perceived by the public ?


16 Jan 2025 • 8:30 AM MYT


TheRealNehruism
Writer. Seeker. Teacher

Image credit: Bebas News / The Sun


According to PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan, the debacle surrounding the Najib Addendum is so immense, that it is worthy of calling Anwar to resign.


“All the weaknesses, confusion and legal chaos that have occurred and have the potential to occur regarding this issue … raise serious questions about the prime minister’s qualifications to remain as the leader of the government,” he said, to indicate that if we do not do something to remove Anwar from power, we are putting ourselves in danger.


We can understand why Pas is making a mountain out of a molehill of the issue. Pas is the opposition, and it is the nature of the opposition to agitate the spirit of the people and incline them to be in the mood for change. It is only if the public is in the mood for change, after all, that the opposition can expect to change from being the opposition to becoming the government.


The Najib addendum issue is also the only issue that the opposition currently has to use against the government. The public is fickle and it has a short attention span. It is not often that they are all interested in the same thing or be interested in the same thing for long. Siti Kasim might deem the excessive attention that we are all paying to the Najib addendum saga is turning us into a circus of a nation, but the bottom line is that the Najib addendum is likely the most attention grabbing political development that we have had in recent times – I can’t remember any other event that grabbed the attention of the people as much as Najib’s addendum in the last 3 to 6 months.


Considering all that, it is only expected that Pas will have to milk the Najib addendum debacle to the hilt. When bones are all you have, you have to chew on it and pretend the saliva that you are tasting is the juice of a meat.


At the end of the day, we all have to do the best that we can to do what we have. If fortune favours us, we will have a JCB excavator to make a molehill. If fortune frowns on us, all we will have is a teaspoon to make a mountain. It is Pas’s misfortune that it only has a teaspoon to build a mountain, but you have to applaud Pas’s manliness, for even if it only has a teaspoon, it is proceeding bravely to build itself a mountain anyway.


When all is said and done however, I have no doubt that Pas’s attempt to topple the government using the Najib addendum saga will inevitably fail, because even Muhyiddin, the head of the opposition coalition that Pas a is a member of, is reluctant to exploit the Najib addendum issue to the opposition's advantage. So far, Muhyiddin has not even given a single statement to accuse the Madani government of miscarriage of justice in the manner that it is treating the Najib addendum . Muhyiddin was also conspicuously absent in the Jan 6 solidarity for Najib rally that Pas held for Najib.


Anwar’s recent salvo that the opposition is behaving unreasonably by expecting him to go out of his way to release Najib, when Najib was caught under Mahathir, sentenced under Muhyiddin and imprisoned under Ismail Sabri, is eventually going to move the public opinion to be in the Madani government's favour, simply because it is the truth. Mahathir and Muhyiddin are today prominent figures in the opposition. Pas was a part of the government in the Muhyiddin and Ismail Sabri era, when Najib was sentenced and imprisoned. To now shift the blame on Anwar for keeping Najib in jail, when it was their leaders that had gone out of their way to put Najib in jail in the first place, while they sat on their hands and watched silently, will place Pas’s desire to topple Anwar through the Najib addendum saga to be squarely against reality. Not only won’t it go far even if they push it hard, they will likely find out that reality bites if they push it too hard.


We must remember that a bona fide momentum that will topple the government does not only require the public to give attention to an issue, the issue must also agitate and excite them.


The Najib addendum saga might grab the attention of the public, but it doesn’t agitate or excite them.


It doesn't agitate or excite us, because we are all aware that the person that is in the Kajang prison today is Najib, not Gandhi or Mandela. Najib is a man who is claiming that he received billions of ringgit from people that he doesn’t even know of, although he has never given them his bank account number, but simply assumed that they gave him the billions on behalf of a Saudi king, although he never sent even a thank you note to the king for giving him such an outlandish and extravagant gift. This sort of story might grab the attention of the public for its sheer scale and audacity , but it is not going to move them to lift even a finger to do anything more than be regaled by it.


If the public at all does anything to topple Anwar like the opposition wants, it will be because they are aggrieved by Anwar, and are merely using the Najib addendum issue as a vehicle to channel their grievances against him.


Anwar and his government however, has not done anything to cause any major grievances in the people.


For all intent and purposes, Anwar’s reaction towards the Najib addendum is likely going to be perceived by the public as a case of how an adult child would react when they were issued an order from their elderly father, although they themself disagreed or were disinclined to follow the command.


They will drag their feet and come out with 101 excuses as to why they haven’t executed the command, without actually coming out outright to say that they will not execute the command, as a way to signal and persuade their father to withdraw the command.


If their father doesn’t double down and admonish them in regards to the delay, and insist that they execute the command at once, they will assume that their signal has been received by their father, and their father has acquiesced to their desire of not executing the command.


This kind of back and forth, where you have to faham faham sendiri, or understand for yourself what is going on although nothing is being said openly, is a part of Asian culture.


If Pas fights for the overt message while ignoring the underlying meaning, it will be Pas, not Anwar, that will be subconsciously faulted for either being too daft in not being able to understand by itself the subtle meaning of what is going on, or be implicated as being rude for ignoring the subtle message and continuing to poke a sensitive issue, that troubles the prestige, gravitas and dignitas of "the father", with a needle.