JULY 11 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s ringing endorsement of Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as prime minister perhaps came 99 days too early, when he rejoined Umno on April 4.
The beaming smile that Saturday has now turned into a smirk, not quite a good sign from the straight-talking fourth prime minister, who turned 84 yesterday.
For the past few days, he has been irked by the Najib Administration’s decision to scrap teaching science and mathematics in English by 2012, a policy he initiated in his last year of power in 2003.
Dr Mahathir, who has been taciturn about Najib’s performance as prime minister unlike his very public opinion about Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s time at the helm, is now slowly venting steam and spleen over the government’s policy switch.
And the nearly 50,000 votes in his blog show that many think he is right.
He has publicly disagreed with the U-turn, pointing out he never agreed to it, contradicting a statement by Education Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s claim that the grand old man of Malaysan politics understood the reasons for the switch.
The irony is Muhyiddin has been instrumental in getting Dr Mahathir to endorse both Najib as more than an able replacement for the embattled Abdullah, who was hobbled by his predecessor’s criticisms, and Barisan Nasional’s disastrous electoral outing in 2008.
And Muhyiddin was the one who pointed out Dr Mahathir’s presence at the Umno general assembly last March when Abdullah passed the party’s stewardship to Najib, in what some critics said marred Abdullah’s last days as party president and prime minister.
All said and done, it must be grating for Dr Mahathir to see another of his anointed successors march to a different beat and walk another path than the one mapped out by him in his 22 years of power.
Najib appears to follow the policies and philosophies of the fifth prime minister; for example, by not reviving the crooked bridge proposal to replace the Causeway to Singapore, junking the policy of teaching Science and Mathematics in English and pursuing a friendly foreign policy with Singapore, Australia and the United States.
Dr Mahathir has used his blog, www.chedet.cc, to articulate his views, some gently but still forceful, hallmarks of a man who has a vision and mindset that will not waver.
After all, he brought the once-agrarian Malaysian economy kicking and screaming into the 21st century, through his various plans and schemes after he took power in 1981.
He pushed for greater industrial development, instituted Islamic-oriented institutions, sketched his Vision 2020 for a Bangsa Malaysia, set up the National Service to instil patriotism in the country’s youth and brought back English to widen the acquisition of knowledge critical to the country’s future.
But some people have kicked and screamed, ironically within the party he founded in 1988 from the ashes of old Umno. And the community that he had shed tears for in his self-confessed failure to change their mindset.
And now, as he has claimed in the past when pointing to his deputy premiers who have either quit or been fired, Dr Mahathir might be regretting his decision to endorse Najib and, for that matter, Muhyiddin for the country’s top two jobs after his disappointment with Pak Lah. For they, too, have turned on him.
And now, as he did after the first year of the Abdullah Administration that scrapped the crooked bridge project, the double-track railway project and became friendly with both Australia and Singapore, Dr Mahathir is kicking and screaming in his own subtle and sarcastic ways.
Which means any fireworks he lets off now is not to celebrate Najib’s 100 days as prime minister.
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For Najib, Muhyiddin and gang , they will administer the country as they think fit and the final arbiter are firstly, the UMNO and BN members , and of course the supreme political factor in a democracy : the Rakyat. The rakyat hobbled Pak Lah to hand over power, not UMNO and BN. The ballot box in GE 13.
Tun Dr. Mahathir cannot easily infuence Najib to change policies. They are their own bosses but this wise "LION" still has good and powerful fangs . Najib is well advised to consider how his views would impact public opinion and of course the voting trends in GE13.
As rightly pointed out by the Malaysian Insider, Tun Dr. Mahathir has shown his fangs but with great patience in holding them back from seriously biting the necks of Najib and Muhyiddin. The Lion will definitely bite if there is no reason to hold it back for the sake of the country he loves very much.