Knives Out To Get Najib Says The Economist Magazine

This is from The Economist Magazine. You can click on the link to read the full article. I have truncated some.  
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Politics in Malaysia :  Knives out

Misfortunes surround Malaysia’s prime minister

Jan 31st 2015 | KUALA LUMPUR 

WORLD leaders rarely regret a chance to pose with Barack Obama. But in December Malaysian voters responded angrily to footage of Najib Razak, their prime minister, playing golf with America’s president—just as severe floods were inundating the country’s coastal provinces. 

A hasty tour of the flood zones, from which more than 200,000 people were evacuated, went some way to repairing the prime minister’s image. So too did the news this month that the filthy floodwaters had handed him a bout of E. coli.

                                                            Najib: diminished 

That a stomach bug might be a positive development for Mr Najib says much about his difficulties. (My comments : Haa haa. The Mat Salleh really know how to be sarcastic).

Since leading his coalition to a slim victory in elections in 2013, with less than half the popular vote, his approval rating has dropped about ten points to less than 50%, according to the Merdeka Centre, a pollster. 

Rumours persist that rebels are rallying around Mr Najib’s deputy, Muhyiddin Yassin. 

This kind of rough and tumble is not rare in Malaysia’s ruthless politics. It looks rather like the brawling which eventually toppled Mr Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in 2009. 

But lately two singular developments have added to the prime minister’s problems. 

The first is the terrible performance of 1MDB, a loss-making state investment fund that is struggling to service around $12 billion of debt and whose board of advisers Mr Najib chairs. At the end of December it failed to repay a $563m loan; some people fear that a costly bail-out is on the cards.

The second distraction is an unexpected verdict handed down by the federal court in a long-running murder case. On January 13th the court overturned the acquittal of two policemen who were convicted in 2009 of murdering a Mongolian woman. (I am not going to repeat the rest. Pi baca sendiri).

Mr Najib’s position is probably safe for the moment. None of his rivals yet commands quite enough support within UMNO or among voters. He is throwing bones to his detractors: in November he backed down on a promise to do away with the Sedition Act—a noxious colonial-era law on censorship that is currently being used to harry opposition figures—and pledged instead to bolster it with new clauses that would criminalise some speech against Islam and other religions. 

Much will depend on the economy, for which Mr Najib, who is both prime minister and finance minister, is seen as having full responsibility. Though the country has gradually grown less dependent on revenues from oil and gas, these still make up around 30% of government income. The collapse of oil prices has left a hole. 

The government has taken the chance to slash fuel subsidies, and on January 20th it pledged to keep the deficit fairly close to its earlier target of 3%. But spending cuts may unsettle the public, which is already swallowing a new tax for goods and services.

Hardly anyone thinks Mr Najib still has the power or the will to push through the big-ticket reforms he once considered, such as a plan to tone down positive discrimination laws, which throttle growth by favouring the Malay majority at the expense of ethnic Chinese and Indians. But his defenestration could well mean UMNO veering even harder to the right on divisive issues such as Islam’s place in society. Few voters really want Malaysia’s polarised racial politics to get any more toxic.

My comments : Looks like the Western media finally thinks that this is a news worthy item. Knives out ? Ouch !  

The international community is now onto the scent. How will the international community react? Malaysia is a very, very important country not just in Asia but in the world. 

Our economy is the 30th largest in the world (US$525 billion at PPP or about RM1.8 Trillion, refer CIA World Factbook.) However our per capita GDP is no. 79 in the world. This means there are significant numbers of very rich people in Malaysia.

Anyway, do you think the US Embassy will seek to help Najib? What about the meddlesome British? Singapore?   Which foreign country or foreign power would like to see Najib stay in power or leave? 

Everyone wants to see Malaysia prosper. When we do not prosper - all across the board - people will get kicked out.

At this point in our history even a used handbag would do a better job than Najib. 

To be practical, the speed of the change will be influenced by the readiness of the successors in line. I use the plural.  Successors you know who you are - now is not the time to play segan. Step up.