Najib Tun Razak VS Anwar Ibrahim.

The survival of our nation is in the hands of a powerful few divided into two opposing camps fighting it out in a high-stakes poker game. The victors will take all, banishing the losers to the periphery of the political landscape for the following five years.

There is a sharp contrast between the political agendas of BN and Pakatan Rakyat, personified in the characters of Najib Tun Razak and Anwar Ibrahim.

Many perceive Najib’s tenure as premier since April 2009 as characterised by the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion, of a race-based agenda. And this is despite the grandiose rhetoric and the re-packaging of the BN brand.

There are ghosts that haunt Najib and BN. We are not talking only of recent developments — the allegations of a murder conspiracy, corruption in defence purchases, the mysterious death of an opposition party’s employee. There are ghosts that come from a more distant past.

Opposition leader Syed Husin Ali told Asiaweek in 1998: “Najib is an opportunist who sits on the fence until he figures out which way the wind is blowing. Najib is always seen as unreliable.

“In 1987, he crossed over.” This was a reference to the Umno supreme council election of that year, when vice-president Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenged president Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“Though he was said to privately back Razaleigh, Najib switched to Mahathir at the last minute,” said Syed Husin.

Najib’s critics also note he has never been a fighter. As the record shows, he went for party posts only when there was a vacancy, never in a straight contest to dislodge anyone.

It is alleged that as premier he has displayed indecisiveness. In recent months, he has made several U-turns and confusing decisions on the New Eeconomic Model, the gambling licence for tycoon Vincent Tan, and even on his foreign labour policy and other critical issues affecting public interest.

But let us go back to the past, which haunts not only Najib himself but also the public.

A rabble-rouser

“Not everybody remembers him fondly,” said Asiaweek in 1998. “In 1987, Najib, then acting head of Umno Youth wing, was at the centre of a flap over the contentious issue of mother-tongue education.

“Many recall him as a rabble-rouser who tried to whip up anti-Chinese education sentiments and weaken the position of Mandarin-medium schools.”

Since then, Najib has conceded that he might have been on the extreme side then but insisted that it was the nature of the post he held in Umno. “Whoever becomes Umno Youth leader would have been seen as a little more radical,” Najib told Asiaweek, adding that he had become wiser and now appreciated diversity as a source of strength.

Indeed, Anwar Ibrahim, when he was Umno Youth leader, also displayed the same weakness. He bullied MCA into submission over the “pendatang” issue during Dr Ling Liong Sik’s presidential tenure.

Some perhaps believe that the collision course between Najib and Anwar is fated and must be played out.

In a political landscape that is seldom short of mendacity, dirty tricks and shrewd politicking, Pakatan has to tread cautiously against the BN, powered as it is by the Three Ms — money, manpower and machines.

The allegations of vote-buying at by-elections, the blatant abuse of power — as seen, for example, in the Perak coup — and undermining democratic institutions are a spoiler to BN’s oratory about transformation, the uplift of integrity and inter-racial unity.

Najib’s self-styled “straight-talk” may be backfiring. There is a YouTube video showing him apparently offering to buy votes during the campaign for the Sibu by-election.

Perhaps his past has a lot to do with this willingness to stoop to conquer.

Capable of only managing

“Unlike Mahathir and Anwar, who both fought their way up through the rank and file, Najib is the son of a former prime minister and was catapulted into politics in 1976 after his father, Abdul Razak Hussein, died in office,” wrote S Jayasankaran of the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) in 1998.

Becoming a member of parliament at age 22, Najib’s political climb within Umno and the government over the decades has been described as steady and uneventful.

“Based on his ministerial record,” political analysts say, Najib “would make a capable leader but one who manages rather than envisions,” FEER reported.

Many observers think the next general election will be one of the most fiercely fought that Malaysians have seen. The two contesting coalitions are working overtime for fear of a fatal political eclipse.

With it will come a surge of vote-buying cash and intense propaganda that the dispensers hope will act as drugs to induce amnesia of the sinful past. Will they work? Will the promised new dawn of Malaysian politics ever come true?

Will Malaysians wake up on the morning after the vote to rejoice and exclaim, “I feel change in the air”?

Stanley Koh was a former head of research unit at MCA.

FMT