The Bukit Gantang by-election has shaped into a battle between one Mentri Besar vs two Prime Ministers.
The Mentri Besar is Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, the popular and legitimate Perak MB and not the illegitimate usurper Datuk Zambry Abdul Kadir.
Ranged against him are the new Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak who had orchestrated the unethical, undemocratic, illegal and unconstitutional power grab in Perak and plunged the “silver state” into a political and constitutional stalemate in the past two months and the former Prime Minister of 22 years, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad.
I had described Mahathir as swiftly taking his place as the eminence grise in the Najib premiership with the quick repudiation of whatever there is of the Abdullah legacy in Umno and the fifth premiership in the country.
For Mahathir’s role in the national affairs of state under Prime Minister Najib, there are blog visitors who prefer to summon up the image of Empress Dowager Cixi, who became the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, ruling over China for 48 years from her husband’s death in 1861 to her own death in 1908.
Coming from an ordinary Manchu family and having been selected by the Xianfeng Emperor as a concubine, she exercised almost total control over the court under the nominal rule of her son the Tongzhi Emperor and her nephew the Guangxu Emperor, both of whom unsuccessfully attempted to rule in their own right.
Have your pick – eminence grise or latter-day Empress Dowager.
Among the important issues to be decided by the voters of the Bukit Gantang on behalf of the people of Perak and Malaysia in the by-election today is now added a very crucial one – whether Malaysians want Mahathir to play the role of a Empress Dowager in the Najib administration!