COMMENT For months the debate in political salons of the country revolved around whether the prime minister’s frequent deferment of the polls invited disaster for Umno-BN or, conversely, that it afforded him time to save the government’s bacon.

Disaster was thought to stem from the rattle of skeletons in his and Umno-BN’s closets, their whine expected to reach a crescendo as hitherto appeased functionaries shed their induced stupor to hint at dark deeds behind the facade of a government very much in control despite the threat of scandalous disclosure working its corrosive effects on its credibility.

Conversely, polls deferment, aided and abetted by cash handouts to the have-nots, was seen as affording time for the balm of munificent handouts to offset the fallout from periodic revelations of scandal, past and present.           

   

On the eve of the annual Umno general assembly and just as the final time-corridor in which to hold polls this year is slipping past, the racket from skeletons whining in the government’s closet has become far too audible to ignore.

The president of Umno is in danger of running afoul of a corollary to his self-set criterion of being a party nominee for the polls: Is the candidate winnable?   

Most pundits would rate Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s chances of retaining the Pekan parliamentary constituency as much better than even, a probable challenge from PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang for the seat notwithstanding.

NONE But with the latest revelations from the Najib family friend, businessman Deepak Jaikishen ( left ), and the news from lawyers involved in the Scorpene inquest in France that the PM and his onetime aide, Abdul Razak Baginda, are priority witnesses in the inquiry and would be subpoenaed, Najib is firmly in the eye of a maelstrom whose churning waters could upend his party and government.      

If that were not perilous enough, the case notes from the murder trial of the Mongolian woman, Altantuya Shaariibuu, would also be admitted at the French inquest into corrupt practices surrounding the sale of submarines to Malaysia early the last decade while Najib was the defence minister.

bukit gantang nomination day najib altantuya and cartoons 290309 02 The murder of the Mongolian woman in 2006 has been rattling around in the collective memory of the country like the Watergate burglary did in the early years of the second term of eventually disgraced US president Richard Nixon.       

The raft of new revelations by Deepak and the Scorpene inquiry lawyers is not likely to undermine Najib’s chances of being returned to Parliament from Pekan but it definitely undercuts the electability of the administration he leads, a government widely considered to be in danger of losing its mandate at the oft-deferred general election.

Najib’s decision to defer polls looks, at this remove, to have been a gamble he is in acute danger of losing.

Credibility as a leader of reforms

It has raised issues about his credibility as a leader of reforms that his administration is supposed to have initiated to rescue a wobbling BN from looming defeat at the polls.

His damaged credibility apart, the decision to focus the government’s campaign on the PM, whose personal popularity as distinct from that of the Umno-BN cabal he leads, is said to be winsome enough to salvage the administration in the eyes of the electorate, now looks like a calculation that is going wrong.

NONE The PM strove to exploit the ‘new broom’ goodwill that usually follows the inauguration of an administration under a newly installed leader, and when he shaped to introduce reforms, he sustained the perception that he is wanting and willing to push change.

But when those reforms were either opposed by right wing critics in his party and, in reaction, he trimmed his reformist sails to appease them, he managed to uphold the image as somebody wanting reform despite the opposition from within.

This explained the decision to personalise the Umno-BN campaign around the image of the PM as someone the electorate could trust despite the undercurrent of antagonism to his vaunted reformist agenda and his truckling to it.

Now, in the wake of latest revelations issuing from sanctuaries that were always suspected to be brittle and awaiting the disinfectant of sunlight, the personal popularity of the PM will be disclosed for what it is: a vapour from the new broom he embodied but could not enforce.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.