Muhyiddin mulls over strategic options

Time is not on the side of the deputy prime minister if he is aiming for the top job. He can either go for broke, plan an exit strategy or hope his boss will do badly in the coming general election.

COMMENT - FMT

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, a battle-hardened veteran, has suddenly found that time is not on his side at all, and with good reasons too. He stands poised at 64 to enter the wrong side of the 60s in the blink of an eye.

The word from his people is that their man has to decide, sooner rather than later, from among several strategic options arrayed before him.

He may prefer, as he has been doing for some time now, to run hard in the same place. Such an approach is clearly exhausting and can by no means be retained for the long haul.

His current education portfolio, once a minefield and a stepping-stone to the premiership, is a virtual bummer after all the politicising that has gone on here for so long.

No one except for the oddball here and there is in the least bit interested whether national schools retain Malay or English, or both, for the teaching of maths and science. The deputy prime minister is trying to squeeze water from a stone here.

No one batted an eyelid either when Muhyiddin called in recent days for the teaching of English to be reviewed. There was only ominous silence when he revealed that after 17 years of learning English in school – two years nursery, two years kindergarten, six years primary, five years secondary and two years pre-university – a student can only smile and giggle nervously when interviewed in English.

Exit strategy

Muhyiddin can also work out an exit strategy, anathema to his many supporters, or go for broke and take on Najib Tun Razak, his boss and Umno president who is a good many years his junior.

Screaming that enough is enough is not an immediate option since Najib has craftily postponed the Umno elections until after the next general election. The excuse was provided by Muhyiddin’s infamous statement not so long ago that he’s Malay first, a Malaysian second. That was seen as knocking Najib’s 1Malaysia theme for his administration in the teeth at a time when he most needed support.

Muhyiddin has survived the storm in a teacup that followed. However, his deliberately calculated insult on national television has neither been forgiven nor forgotten by Najib’s people. It will be payback time at the first opportunity that Najib gets to even scores with a deputy whose loyalty is now seriously in doubt.

Najib knows that he has to keep looking over his shoulder now all the time when he’s not sleeping with an eye open, his rusting keris poised at his side. Such is the intrigue that has gone on in Malay politics since the Malayalee Muslims in Singapore first raised the banner of Malay nationalism to cope with the Chinese commercial spirit.

Muhyiddin has to now contend with the distinct possibility that many of his supporters will be summarily dropped from the slate for the next polls. Many of those who are retained will certainly not be given places in government if they win. Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the eternal Machiavellian, employed this strategy to good advantage during his long innings, 22 years, in power.

Do-nothing strategy

Muhyiddin has yet another option– to wait it out until the general election is over and gamble on the possibility that Najib will be ousted if the ruling Barisan Nasional fails to wrest back its two-thirds majority in Parliament. That’s the fate that Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, suffered after a drubbing at the 2008 general election. The opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat, retained Kelantan as expected and bagged another four states in Peninsular Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur.

Muhyiddin’s best bet is that Najib would have proven himself weak, at least on the surface, in the face of the machinations of the grand puppet master Mahathir within the Umno supreme council, which is in his pocket. The former premier, going on to 87, is determined to witness his son, Mukhriz, occupying Muhyiddin’s chair before he meets his maker. In order for that to happen, Mahathir has to stage-manage Muhyiddin’s political career and have him kicked upstairs to be a seat-warmer for his son.
In short, Muhyiddin can adopt the do-nothing strategy but it’s by no means a safe strategy.

Time is not on Mahathir’s side.

However, there is still, as yet, no sign that he will become senile in the near future and/or succumb to dementia although he has been known to plead temporary amnesia in the past.

If Mahathir forgets, Muhyiddin will be history, Najib too but that be more because the latter will die laughing. They may all, as yet, cancel each other out and remove themselves from the political equation. That would be one huge relief to all Malaysians who see Mahathir as the bane of their life, Najib a pitiful clown and his deputy one long in the making.

Between Najib and Muhyiddin, there are brickbats and bouquets as well for guessing if the opposition can fathom who’s the lesser of two evils. Blame this on the Mahathir factor, among others, which has seen Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim embroiled in a long-running Sodomy II in court. True, Mahathir used Najib to launch Sodomy II, a fact which Muhyiddin’s people keep reminding Anwar. But Muhyiddin is no angel either as evident from his involvement with Mahathir and Mukhriz to ease out Najib from the premiership. He (Anwar) may yet beat the odds and at least have the long, last laugh when the next general election results drift in. He is no doubt keeping his fingers crossed.