Najib Razak has finally found the guts to dissolve the Malaysian Parliament, effective today (Saturday, 7th April 2018). What he needs to do now is to keep his fingers crossed and hopes his lucky number – 11 – will bring victory to him. Perhaps that’s the only reason why he didn’t announce the dissolution yesterday, the same day he made the announcement.

 

The 7th April, with 7 and 4, will add up to 11 – his lucky number. Why is the number 11 so special to him? Apparently, his father Abdul Razak was born on March 11, 1922 while his mother Rahah Noah was born on June 11, 1933. Coincidently, his first child was also born on the 11th day of a particular month. And the UMNO was founded on May 11, 1946.

 

Although Mr. Najib’s birth-date has very little to do with 11, he was Pahang’s 11th Menteri Besar (Chief Minister). Obviously, he is obsessed with the number 11, the same way his predecessor Abdullah Badawi obsessed with number 13. But looking at how Badawi plunged to his humiliating exit, Najib needs more than his lucky number to keep his power.

The 14th general election will be the mother of all elections. With all the scandals stacked against him, Najib will emerge extremely powerful if he wins the election. In fact, if the opposition couldn’t unseat him this round, he could rule longer than present record-holder – former premier Mahathir Mohamad – whom ruled for 22 years from 1981 to 2003.

 

But to compete with Mahathir for the title as the longest serving prime minister isn’t the reason why Najib must win this election – by hook or by crook. If he loses, Mr. Najib would be in deep shit. He could end up in self-imposed exile, similar to the fate of former Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was overthrown in a military coup on 19 September 2006.

 

At worst, Najib could end up in prison, similar to former South Korean President Park Geun-hye who has just been given a 24-year prison term for 16 criminal charges – including bribery, coercion and abuse of power. There’s of course, a remote possibility that Najib might walk free if a new Malaysian government agrees to a settlement with him.

On the paper, Najib son of Razak is expected to win the 14th nationwide election. It’s not hard to understand why punters are betting he will win again. His gerrymandering through the latest bulldozed redelineation exercise means the long-ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) has won up to 10 seats in the 222-member Parliament before the voting even started.

 

One doesn’t need a rocket scientist to find the massive cheating when opposition strongholds are packed with more than 100,000 voters while BN-controlled seats, like Putrajaya, could have as few as 17,000 voters. In short, opposition could win only 1 seat but Najib’s Barisan National could grab 6 seats with the same number of voters.

 

Cheating is just the appetizer here. The main course is the bullying, intimidation and suppression. Government-controlled Registry of Societies (RoS) was instructed to temporarily dissolve Mahathir’s party – Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) – at the eleventh hour before Najib announced the dissolution of Parliament.

It appears that former Mahathir is still very influential and could potentially swing the ethnic-Malay voters to support opposition in droves. In spite of Najib and his propaganda machines calling Mahathir’s young party irrelevant, amusingly, the panicked regime has been throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the 93-year-old Mahathir.

 

The old Mahathir must be stopped at all cost. That’s why his party was deliberately crippled at the eleventh hour so that they couldn’t contest under their party banner. In fact, Najib was so terrified of his former mentor Mahathir that banners of him has been outlawed by virtue of his party being declared “illegal”. This is how the old school of suppression and oppression works.

 

Najib’s propaganda machines – including mainstream news media, cybertroopers, propagandists, bloggers and whatnot – has been foaming at the mouth whining, crying and bitching that a supposedly senile old man like Mahathir isn’t fit to become a prime minister again. Yet, at the same time, Najib disallows banners of Mahathir and even refuses to debate with the old man.

In essence, the redelineation exercise has separated the voters along the racial lines. The ethnic-Chinese and ethnic-Indian can vote for opposition parties for all Najib cares. The ethnic-Malay will continue to vote for Najib’s ruling Barisan Nasional, at least that’s what the regime thought. However, there’s one huge problem with such assumption.

 

By depending only on Malays for his survival, Najib has essentially put all the eggs in one basket, not that he has any better option. The strategy was a “double-edged sword”. Unless his lucky number works flawlessly, a sudden swing in Malay votes would spell the end of the game for Mr. Najib. It was like betting either “big or small” on gambling table at a casino.

 

Hence, the billion dollar question is – are the civil servants and rural village folks, majority of whom are ethnic-Malay, happy with the status quo? Chances are they were not, otherwise military intelligence would have advised the prime minister to call for a snap election in 2016 or 2017, without Najib huffing and puffing for Chinese votes.

The biggest mistake by Najib regime could be its deliberate act of outlawing Mahathir’s party, forcing all the four parties in the opposition pact to use PKR (People’s Justice Party) logo as the common symbol. This could be a blessing in disguise. Suddenly, Malay folks who were spooked by Chinese-based DAP’s rocket logo might vote for opposition without fear.

 

There’s no guarantee that Malays will vote for Barisan Nasional in droves. Previous BN-supporters who are now disillusioned with Najib’s mismanagement and high cost of living could swing to Mahathir at worst, or refuse to vote entirely at best. Yes, not only Chinese may stay at home because of disappointment over gerrymandering, the Malays may do the same out of frustration.

 

Either way, that doesn’t bode well for Najib. Mahathir had survived during his era because neither the Chinese nor the Malay voters swung in tandem at the same time. The political landscape has changed since the 12th election in 2008. With defiant Chinese remain dissatisfied with Najib, he is clearly at the mercy of the Malay voters and cannot afford a swing.

The biggest problem facing Najib is this – it’s getting harder to read the sentiment on the ground, especially the Malays. They are getting smarter and sophisticated, thanks to alternate social media. The young Malay voters, mostly less grateful to the BN-government, are slowly overwhelming the old birds. The Malays are no longer based on “herd mentality”.

 

The Malays, exposed to the Internet, could smell a rat miles away when Najib rushed the redelineation exercise, bulldozed the Anti-Fake News Law and outlawed Mahathir’s party. The plot to gather high concentration of Malay voters is the recipe for disaster, should the Malays feel Mahathir has been unfairly victimized and bullied. Najib will either win big, or lose his shirt.

 

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April 7th, 2018 by financetwitter

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