Worst yet to come for Najib after GE14 defeat

PETALING JAYA: Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is about to create Malaysian history by becoming the prime minister for the second time, after nearly 16 years of absence from active politics, while his son, Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir, is set to be made Kedah mentri besar, reversing his sacking in 2015.

In a short span of two years, Dr Mahathir turned the informal Pakatan Harapan pact from a rag-tag band into true giant killers, defeating the Barisan Nasional that he had once helped make formidable and — until today — seemingly invincible.

While all eyes are on Dr Mahathir as he prepares to be sworn in as the seventh prime minister, away from the spotlight, Datuk Seri Najib Razak is heading towards more turmoil and it remains to be seen if Umno will even allow the former prime minister to become BN’s Opposition leader.

Umno has already postponed its internal elections that must be held triennially and will have no recourse but to conduct one soon on pain of deregistration.

For Najib, there can be no worse circumstance under which to face the party. Virtually all its leaders were wiped out in the 14th general election and fewer than a quarter of Umno’s supreme council survived as Malaysians voted overwhelmingly to replace BN as the government.

He can expect the party’s over three million members, 146,000 of whom have direct voting rights in the party, to bay for blood over the massacre at the ballot boxes on May 9.

At the next Umno annual assembly, the same rules will no longer apply and the usual calls for delegates to unite behind leaders will likely fall on deaf ears as the Malay nationalist party comes to term with the Opposition label that it must now wear.

For a party that has never tasted defeat at the federal level in all the years since Merdeka, Umno and its surviving Barisan Nasional allies are, for the first time, on the outside looking in.

Without the largesse that kept members content, Najib can expect a stormy reception at the assembly and should not hope for the typical call for the party’s top to positions to go uncontested, which has been the norm despite the party amending its constitution to allow these to be more easily challenged.

If Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was hounded from office after BN lost its traditional parliamentary supermajority in 2008, Najib should be under no illusions about what the leader who led the party to the ignominy of defeat can expect.