Tok Mat reveals UMNO's conspiracy

My SinChew

I suppose after all he had gone through as a top UMNO politician and at 71, Tan Sri Mohamed Rahmat couldn't be bothered if brickbats are thrown at him for his "expose" or "allegations" (as some might want to call it) in his book which hit book stores recently.

In the book entitled Akhir Sebuah Iimpian, or The End of A Dream published by news portal The Malaysian Insider, Tok Mat as he is fondly known, wrote briefly his early years in UMNO and jottings of his involvement in the Mahathir era at length. And of course we are told of power struggle and crisis.

But the ones which to me, would raise many an eye brow would be his "revelations." For example this. Tok Mat admitted that as Information minister in the Hussein Onn government he had instructed civil servants to help the BN topple the PAS led government in Kelantan in 1977.

In his book Tok Mat revealed that PM Hussein wanted to "bring down the PAS government in Kelantan." "To ensure the success of the campaign I deployed 300 officers and staff of the Information ministry's special unit. Their duty was to live among the kampong folks in Kelantan and obtain vital information as well as convince the Kelantanese that the time was right to hand over power to UMNO and BN."

Nothing surprisingly as many have always "known this all along." Still here we have a former minister admitting to it openly. Tok Mat wrote again on the same tactic, this time used in Sabah against the PBS in the 1994 election. Tok Mat was then Information minister in Dr. Mahathir's cabinet.

He also revealed that Harun Idris wanted to be PM and quoted the late MB of Selangor as saying " I've been MB for ages its time for me to move to Federal," indicating that would be the first step of realising his premiership dream. The PM then was Hussein Onn who, said Tok Mat, despite his officer and a gentleman spirit was also a believer of kill-or-be-killed principle.

According to Tok Mat the PM went into action by demanding for Harun's resignation citing the Selangor's MB corruption case as reason. (Harun's loyalists on the other hand believed the corruption charges in the first place were due to Harun's ambition to be PM. But this "allegation" was not mentioned by Tok Mat). Said Tok Mat, Harun was relunctant to relinquish the post and gave trivial excuses.

Tok Mat wrote also on attempt to push Hussein out of office by embarrassing him. "A little known UMNO man, Sulaiman Palestin challenged Hussein for the UMNO presidency and although Hussein won, the president was embarrassed and hurt."

Hussein quit and handed the UMNO presidency and PM post to his deputy Dr Mahathir. Tok Mat claimed later he asked Sulaiman who had asked him to contest against Hussein. Sulaiman, said Tok Mat, just smiled.

"After Hussein resigned and handed power to Dr Mahathir, Sulaiman was appointed UMNO Information chief," wrote Tok Mat.

The former UMNO Sec Gen also denied he was an Anwar Ibrahim supporter and had a hand in ending the political career of Tun Ghafar Baba who was then the DPM.

Writing about Anwar's famous media conference to announce his candidacy for the deputy president contest, Tok Mat said he not know that Anwar would be making the announcement when he allowed him to use the UMNO head quarters premises.

Almost all supreme council members were with Anwar that day giving the impression he had their backing to replace Ghaffar. Tok Mat pointed accusing fingers at the then UMNO executive secretary for the entire episode.

Tok Mat admitted he served Dr Mahathir because I liked his style. So he gave his all. He never had regrets in supporting Dr Mahathir. But Tok Mat did not minced words to say that he is still angry and sad at the way Dr Mahathir dumped' him after all he had done for him.

"I took all the blows for Dr. Mahathir when the rakyat was angry and hated him," wrote Tok Mat. He summed up Dr Mahathir as a man who chucked people after milking them dry.

Tok Mat had nice words for current PM Najib Razak. As for Muhyiddin Yassin the present DPM, Tok Mat only mentioned his name twice. The first was a caption for a photograph of him, Anwar and Muhyiddin who he described as "Anwar's strongman at that time."

The second mention was when he wrote about land acquisition in Johor. "In Johor at that time, Muhyiddin Yassin was the MB who created many controversies in land acquisition matters." He did not elaborate.

Whatever one's take is, on the book and whether one is to rebutt the things he said, it won't matter. Like I said earlier I think Tok Mat doesn't give a damn. (By MOHSIN ABDULLAH/MySinchew)