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Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak flounders as his political secretary resigns

THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is to the political manor born. An aristocrat, a major Pahang chieftain, a relentless ambition to emulate his late father, an awesome political machine, makes him an useful ally in any political ally. He survived many an attempt to have him sidelined, but he has deflected every attempt. He nearly did not make it as deputy prime minister when Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed as Malaysia's fifth prime minister. For all his feudal plus points in Malay society, he is weighed down with unfeudal and uncharacteristic personal, character and familial flaws that would have sunk many a lesser man.

That he survived is testament not to his brilliance nor political savvy but to his most valuable asset, his political secretary for the past decade, Mr Alies Anor Abdul. This quiet French-speaking self-effacing man in his forties, known to the UMNO cogniscenti but not the world outside, is the architect of his steady political rise. Dato' Seri Najib knows this only too well. Especially after he was appointed deputy prime minister, and hopes, soon, by political custom the next UMNO deputy president. But Mr Alies Anor wants no part of it. He wanted to resign his post and, if had his way, from politics,. He was persuaded to stay on until the March general election. He was promoted political secretary to the deputy prime minister. He was asked to stay on until after the UMNO elections in September. He would not. On 31 May 2004, he resigned.

He has not said why. But it centres on how the UMNO establishment conspired to destroy its deputy president, and the country's deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. The cultural shockwaves in UMNO and in the Malay community continues unabated as Dato' Seri Anwar fights a brilliant campaign from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh to force UMNO leaders to look over their shoulders in fear even as they insist he is history. The more he looms large, the the more nervous and frightened are those who had even cameo roles in his political and personal destruction. Mr Alies Anor was one of them. His was then already political secretary to Dato' Seri Najib, and headed a sub-commitee to ensure Dato' Seri Anwar's political demise.

It comes to haunt him, as it had many others. His peace of mind is disturbed, a personal crisis of confidence he alone must come to terms with. It would not have been as bad if, as UMNO leaders had hoped, he died in the fracas that followed his arrest in 1998. But he is the political nightmare UMNO leaders must live with, much as they insist he is history. Every day he lives, those who conspired against him dissolve in self-doubt and Godly fear. There is more of that now, and public policy clashes with personal conviction and religiosity. When the political fight for the UMNO high ground comes with it a renewed programme to sideline Dato' Seri Anwar for good, many more would drop out. Especially when it is implicity accepted that only those who believe in the final and total political destruction of Dato' Seri Anwar has the right to high office in UMNO. In this, Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib are of the same mind.

Dato' Seri Najib is in the same political boat as a predecessor and mentor, Tan Sri Musa Hitam, in the mid-1980s. Both immensely ambitious and hyperactive, neither hid their belief that they are better men than their prime ministers. Tan Sri Musa took on Dr Mahathir with a brilliant strategic political campaign his political secretary, Mr Ismail Kamaluddin, thought up in the mid-1980s. But it stalled as quickly when tragically Mr Ismail was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died within months. His successor could not carry on the campaign with the same finesse. Tan Sri Musa was hoist on his own petard, and in time forced out by a prime minister bent on revenge.

Like Tan Sri Musa in the Mahathir epoch, Dato' Seri Najib is seen by Pak Lah's inner circle as a political threat. He is everything Pak Lah is not. For for all their amiability and public show of fealty and friendship, the two teams detest each other with venom. As in the 1980s, the more confident of the two is not the prime minister but the deputy. With Mr Alies Anor playing the role of Mr Ismail Kamaluddin - a nephew of a former deputy prime minister, Tun Ismail Abdul Rahman - Dato' Seri Najib had no fear. Pak Lah depends on a coterie of family members for his political strength and strategy, and falls short of what he needs. As with Dr Mahathir, Pak Lah is frightened of his deputy prime minister's reach. There is no love lost between them.

There the similarities end. Tan Sri Musa was a focussed politician who knew what he wanted, and went for it. He ruthlessly hid his faults that even those who knew - and I had first met him at the English College, where he was my senior by four years, in the 1950s, and kept in touch all these years - and constantly surprised at the skeletons as they emerged from his cupboard after his breakup with Tun Mahathir. Dato' Seri Najib, for all his advantages and political shrewdness, is in many ways a gadfly, whose feudal credentials are dependant on his lineage than his brilliance. He must find a new strategist - so he would be elected UMNO deputy president in September, and deflect the belief in the Pak Lah camp that he should be driven out of office as Tan Sri Musa once was. But unlike in the 1980s, there is the danger now of the baby thrown out with the bath water.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com