The Prime Minister and UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak went into a political offensive yesterday when opening the two-day 2015 Kedah UMNO Convention, calling on UMNO members to ignore ‘jemuan-jemuan’ (bad characters) and apple-polishers as these people cause disunity in the ranks.

He said UMNO was capable of remaining in power and win elections if these “unwanted people” were not in the party.

Who are these “bad characters” that Najib was referring to?

The persons who immediately come to mind are UMNO’s longest-serving Prime Minister and President, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, his two-time Finance Minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin and his “hullubalangs” like former Information Minister and Utusan Malaysia editor-in-chief Zainuddin Maidin.

It is most noteworthy that Najib has chosen Kedah to go on the offensive, making the speech before the Kedah Mentri Besar, Mukhriz Mahathir, when everybody at the convention and outside knew that heading the “jemuan-jemuan” slammed by Najib is none other than Mukriz’s father, Tun Mahathir.

Is the longest-serving UMNO Prime Minister and President leading the list of “bad characters not wanted in UMNO” by Najib?

After his blog on Feb. 10 quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet about “something rotten in the State of Denmark”, Mahathir said he would quit “if he was the Prime Minister today” and suggested that Najib should “make things easy” and resign if he cannot perform.

Mahathir had not been quiet in the past month, but had waded into the RM42 billion 1MDB scandal which has put all the mega financial scandals in Mahathir’s 22-year premiership to shame in scale and scope, warning that UMNO/BN may just lose in the next general election unless the whole truth about the 1MDB is revealed.

Mahathir supported the Deputy Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin’s proposal for a forensic investigation into the 1MDB since its formation in 2009, but went beyond the DPM’s suggestion that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) should immediately conduct its investigations into 1MDB without having to wait for the outcome from the Auditor-General’s audit, as Mahathir wanted not just “an ordinary audit of the accounts” but immediate forensic investigation by the police on allegations made against several people who were involved in 1MDB’s financial management independently of the Auditor-General’s audit.

Mahathir also called on Najib to explain the source of his huge wealth, that his office declared as a family inheritance, but which his own brothers vehemently denied.

Najib was clearly responding to Mahathir when he said in Kedah yesterday that UMNO was capable of remaining in power and win elections if the “bad characters” were not in the party, as the “the ‘jemuan’ are worse than apple-polishers and ‘batu ronson’ (instigators) because they try to pit us against each other, so much so our shortcomings are amplified, party harmony is affected”.

Najib said getting rid of these negative elements was important to secure Umno’s future.

Is Najib setting the stage for the expulsion of Mahathir from UMNO, which will be another history for Mahathir – out of UMNO three times, twice expelled from UMNO and quitting UMNO once on his own.

In his speech in Kedah, Najib said that he would not condone any wrongdoings and that wrongdoers will face action under the law.

Three outstanding cases out of a host of injustices, where wrongdoings are being condoned and wrongdoers do not have the face the full rigours of the law, immediately come to mind, viz:

• Who murdered Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu in October 2006, as the two former police commandos Azila Hadri and Sirul Azhar did not have the motive to kill Altantuya and blow up her body with military explosives as the duo did not know the Mongolian at all. Why is there a conspiracy of silence and total inaction by the police to investigate the “mastermind” of Altantunya’s murder?

• Who killed DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock at the MACC headquarters on July 16, 2009 and why were MACC officers whose actions the Court of Appeal had ruled last September contributed to Teoh’s death been promoted – eg Hishammuddin Hashim, promoted as Sabah MACC director?

• The failures to charge the UMNO Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industries, Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri who made the racist and seditious call on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses; the former Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Mashitah Ibrahim who lied with the seditious statement that the Chinese in Kedah had burnt the Quran “page by page in a prayer ritual”; and the Penang UMNO leader Datuk Mohd Zaidi Mohd Said who incited inter-racial hate, tension and conflict with the allegation that the success of Penang was because of the illegal businesses and crimes in “broad daylight” of the Chinese in the state.

How can Najib explain such egregious condonation of wrongdoing and failure to ensure that wrongdoers face action under the law in these three instances?