The Monkey Handler


by M. Bakri Musa

In the few months that he has before assuming office I would have expected Prime Minister-in-waiting Najib Razak to be focused on forming his new leadership team and formulating his major policies. Instead there he was in Perak smirking with renegade state politicians who had crossed over to his Barisan coalition. Najib looked like a mischievous monkey handler who had successfully enticed a couple of wily monyets from the neighbor’s coconut tree to his.

In these perilous times Najib is more a slimy backroom political operative consumed with concocting shady deals than a national leader ready to steer the nation through tough economic and other challenges. This latest and unneeded upheaval in Perak only adds to Malaysia’s already muddled political climate, and comes at a time when the nation can ill afford this distraction. Najib is oblivious of the evolving global economic disaster and its inevitable impact on Malaysia.

These handlers too behave like the monkeys they keep. After finishing his latest act in Perak, Najib stayed away. The monkey handler’s interest, like that of the monkeys they keep, was only in creating mischief. Once that is achieved, then he is gone so as to avoid getting entangled.

Initially Najib had planned to join in the Chinese New Year celebration in Ipoh to soak in what he expected would be a sea of public applause to his latest monkey act. Instead because of the unanticipated sea change in public mood, Najib wisely skipped the event. At least he knew when and where he would no longer be welcomed.

Najib should remember that Abdullah Badawi rode into office with the highest approval ratings, and an untainted “Mr. Clean” image to boot. Yet today, less than five years later, Abdullah is being pushed out of office, and his legacy is anything but clean. Najib has yet to assume office and already his approval rating is under 50 percent, and his public image severely tainted by assorted sordid scandals. His public portraits are now being used for stomping muddy shoes. Rest assured that these are only the beginning.

A Chinese proverb has it that it takes three generations to destroy an enterprise. The first starts it; the second builds on it; while the pampered third squanders it. Najib Razak is determined to truncate that process. He is set to destroy a once proud and successful organization – UMNO – which his late father was so instrumental in starting and building.

Najib will bring UMNO down with him, as prophesied by some ancient soothsayer’s “RAHMAN” theory of leadership. The challenge is to ensure that UMNO’s inevitable implosion under Najib would not also take Malaysia down with it.

Our Cultural Burden

If not for his family and political pedigrees, Najib Razak would today be like thousands of other Malays with similar qualifications, nothing more than a midlevel functionary in the civil service or one of the many Government-linked companies.

He was just old enough when his father died to benefit from the generosities and tributes of a nation in need to express them in gratitude to a great patriot that was his father. Remembering the father’s many great deeds, the nation could not do enough for his son; hence Najib meteoric rise.

The dilemma with having your path smoothed out for you is that once you reach the top, there is no one there to grease the trail ahead. From then on you are on your own, and you ill prepared for it.

It is our cultural tradition that such generosities and tributes are showered almost exclusively upon the first-born son. The assumption is that he is the carrier of the father’s traits. This of course is not unique to Malay culture; nor is there a biological basis to that assumption.

I wish we had not been a slave to our culture. By all means shower our gratitude to the late Tun Razak’s family, but then let us be more prudent and choose the smartest or most promising from among his five children to groom, not necessarily only the first born.

Tun Razak’s other sons are way head and shoulders above Najib. The youngest, Nazir, is a banker. Even though he is not a politician, nonetheless his public utterances reflect not only a first-rate mind but also someone very much aware of the many challenges facing our nation. He has also put forth novel ideas on solving them. Unfortunately, Najib is culturally constrained from taking advice from his youngest brother Nazir.

Last year Nazir suggested granting amnesty to corrupt individuals in return for their confessions and making good their loot, prior to implementing tougher laws. To say that it was a radical idea would be an understatement but on reflection, there is considerable merit to his suggestion. At the very least we would get a measure of the magnitude of the problem and its infinite variations. That could help us design better laws and ways to combat the scourge.

Recently Nazir chastised the leadership for not going beyond orthodox fiscal stimulus and monetary measures to meet the current economic crisis. He suggested re-examining the New Economic Policy, with particular reference to minimizing its drag on the economy. He also called for greater collaborations with the emerging giant economies in the region, specifically China, India and the Middle East. Most of all I like his idea of attracting foreign talents, especially into the education sector.

These are the kinds of innovative thinking we yearn from our leaders, not their endless monkeying around with fence-hopping politicians. In chastising the “leadership,” Nazir has shown that he is not constrained by our cultural norms; he has in effect criticized his oldest brother’s leadership.

Monkey Story

There was this story of a peddler of hats who one day fell asleep under a tree in the heat of the day. When he woke up, his hats were all gone except for the one on his head. On looking up he saw the monkeys in the tree with hats. The peddler tried all manner of tricks to induce those monkeys to part with their newfound toys, but to no avail. In disgust he threw his hat to the ground and stomped off. In the finest “monkey see, monkey do” mode, the apes did the same, and that was how the peddler recovered his merchandise.

A generation later it was the peddler’s son who fell asleep under the same tree. He too lost his hats to the monkeys. Remembering the lesson imparted from his father, the young man threw his hat to the ground. At which point the monkeys laughed at him. “You are not getting your hats back,” they scoffed, “we learned your trick from our parents!”

When Najib enticed those monkeys of politics to Barisan, he stole a play from Anwar Ibrahim’s game book. Anwar may rightly feel flattered by Najib’s imitating, or more correctly, aping. However, like the hat-peddler’s son, Najib may have learned his lesson well but what he may not realize is that those political monkeys too had learned their lessons! They are making a monkey of Najib.

When you have a bunch of monkeys and an equally mischievous as well as irresponsible handler, there is no telling what lasting damage they could inflict. It is time to let Najib out of his monkey business and free those monyet under his keep to once again roam the jungle where they belong. If out of habit they still hang around us waiting for their bananas and making a pest of themselves, then we should kill a rooster or two. That would scare away those monkeys.

  1. #1 by chanjoe on Monday, 9 February 2009 - 11:51 am

    Whatever monkey business Najib is doing… it will not last as the Rakyat of today are so much well informed and so much learned. You aint gonna make the monkey out of the Rakyat.

    Those days…UMNO is a sure win in most rural seats but look what happened in 308? Yes…he may be able to get away this round in Perak but only with the assistance of the Ec and of course the so-called Goody Goody man who everyone look up to and respected.

    Corrupted leaders in UMNO are forever corrupted and thats why the monkey who jump to PR and then back to BN in a short period of 1 week….cant stand losing all his millions and contracts.

    It all boils down to $$$$$ and thats why the ex-clerk of Jelapang got no way put but to blame the leadership for her monkey business. Even the 2 chimpanzees who said they were down with illness….they tried to monkey around with miney but was conned and then since they were in the monkey $$$ business earlier, so they continue to monkey their way out with more $$$.

    What have we got in Perak now? A monket king (nothing compared with the great Monket King : Sung Wu Kung) who uses $$$ to get more monkeys and soon the Real Monkey King : Sung Wu Kung will come to catch them and sent them to hell. Lets wait and see.

  2. #2 by Steven on Monday, 9 February 2009 - 12:51 pm

    Right on Bakri, you are absolutely right about this monkey-play by that Najis fler. First, they made that monkey from their own party hopped across to PR so that they had the excuse to fire that big monkey, Tajol who was holding the fort then. Obviously, he was not in favour with the monkey handler. Then having got rid of him, and with the monkey handler now fully in charge of the state machinery, the hopping got underway in earnest. The rest is history.
    Yes, the economy is in dire straits for all to see and it will get worse. But do they really care? No, March is too close for comfort and no way monkey handler is going to risk his chance. He will do anything and everything to anyone who gets in his way. Watch out everyone!

  3. #3 by sheriff singh on Monday, 9 February 2009 - 1:29 pm

    Wow. Think about it.

    We will have a Monkey as our Prime Minister in less than two months.

    Pass me a coconut, monkey.

  4. #4 by TheWrathOfGrapes on Monday, 9 February 2009 - 1:44 pm

    /// In the few months that he has before assuming office I would have expected Prime Minister-in-waiting Najib Razak to be focused on forming his new leadership team and formulating his major policies. Instead there he was in Perak smirking with renegade state politicians who had crossed over to his Barisan coalition. Najib looked like a mischievous monkey handler who had successfully enticed a couple of wily monyets from the neighbor’s coconut tree to his. ///

    Well, Najib not only misses the coconut plantation, the coconut tree, and even the coconuts. He only saw the monkeys.

  5. #5 by chengho on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 - 7:07 am

    Najib is more like a marathon runner if you do not have a stamina do not compete do not run with him he is going to next BG Lee…

  6. #6 by rockdaboat on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 - 7:28 am

    “Najib is more like a marathon runner if you do not have a stamina do not compete do not run with him he is going to next BG Lee…” – chengho

    LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
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    LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
    LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

  7. #7 by negarawan on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 - 10:17 am

    Looks like UMNO has arranged for them to be acquitted? The courts can be monkeyed around with

    Published: Tuesday February 10, 2009 MYT 9:51:00 AM
    Perak reps fail to turn for their corruption trial

    IPOH: Behrang assemblyman Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi and Changkat Jering assemblyman Mohd Osman Mohd Jailu failed to turn up for their corruption trial on Tuesday.

    The two, whose resignation from PKR last week sparked a sequence of events that ultimately saw the state government falling into Barisan Nasional hands, were charged in a Sessions Court on Aug 25 last year with allegedly receiving bribes over the application for a RM180mil housing project in Sri Iskandar in Perak Tengah.

    Jamaluddin’s lawyer said his client could not turn up because he was feeling unwell.

  8. #8 by StevePCH on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 - 5:13 pm

    with these two frog failing to turn up for their trial , the “wise” man must be thinking if he’s made the right decision.
    Monkey or not, the P-anthe-R will get you somehow.

  9. #9 by swipenter on Wednesday, 11 February 2009 - 3:08 am

    AAB came into office as “Mr Clean”. Najib even before assuming office as PM has already gained the image as the most scandalous and dirtiest PM of the country so far.(Assuming he becomes PM. We can never be sure what tomorrow will bring).Both of them are monkeys of the worst kind.

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