What would Mahathir do to the Sultans: Hong Kong newspaper has an idea!

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) hinted that it had a concrete idea of what opposition leader Tun Mahathir Mohamad will do to the Sultans – the Monarchs of Malaysia – with after the elections in 2018.

The Hong Kong based newspaper said while there is a fierce battle between Mahathir and Prime Minister Najib Razak, it is the fight in the background that is more interesting.

The paper talks of the bitter feud between 92-year-old Mahathir and the country’s hereditary Malay monarchs. The animosity stretches back to Mahathir’s strong and powerful rule as Prime Minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003.

The feud reignited last year and is likely to be cause for some political fireworks too, observers told the newspaper.

A political watcher said the slow-simmering feud was unlikely to be a major factor in the impending polls, in which Umno and its allied parties are seen as favourites despite the challenge mounted by Mahathir.

The Malay rulers continue to be seen as a guardian of the people’s interest … and a symbol of national unity that is above politics,” said Awang Azman Awang Pawi, a professor of Malay Studies at the University of Malaya.

But expect a mighty response from Mahathir as PM. He might come back with a slew of rulings that may once again curtail the ‘soft powers’ of the Sultans or curb their rights on the ‘Crown lands’ and other resources they enjoy.

SCMP reviewed the time when Mahathir had ugly runnings with the Sultans.

Mahathir’s first major run-in with the sultans was in 1983, when he forced them to give up the right to veto new laws by withholding assent.  A decade later, in 1993, he further curtailed their powers by ending their immunity from prosecution following complaints of errant behaviour.

Mahathir, who served seven Yang di-Pertuan Agongs – the paramount king position rotated every five years among the nine sultans – has previously insisted that, despite his royal run-ins, he is not anti-royalist. “If the sultan doesn’t like me, it’s alright.

“I am not asking people to like me, I am just going to stand up for what is right,” he told This Week in Asia in an interview last March, when asked about the harsh words Sultan Ibrahim Ismail had aimed at him two months earlier.

In the article titled “Forget Najib…watch Mahathir slug it out with Sultans in 2018” depicts what the paper believes Mahathir is capable of doing if he is anointed as the next PM of Malaysia.

The chance that Mahathir becomes PM again has increased with his alliance in the opposition Pakatan Harapan, where he joined his former nemesis Anwar Ibrahim (once his protege) in a bid to battle it out against Najib (also a former protege of Mahathir’s) and bring him down from power. 

SCMP says this December (2017), Malaysians were given yet another glimpse of the bad blood between the nine provincial sultans – who take turns being “king of kings” – and Mahathir, after one of them slammed him for his comments disparaging the Bugis community who make up part of the country’s majority Malays.

However, rumours are that not all the nine Sultans are against Mahathir as some are pro-opposition though this cannot be verified since the Sultans are not keen on hinting who they support in the increasingly complex political arena in Malaysia.

Nevertheless, Mahathir who never apologises to Sultans and Monarchs in Malaysia said: “Yes, I am a very angry man, you can see how angry I am.” in a response rigged with cynicism to a monarch’s comment that he is an angry man who will burn the whole country with his anger.

“Mahathir’s anti-Najib campaign, which he claims is necessary to rid the country of a “kleptocracy”, or thieving government, is seen by the sultans as a threat to their own special status, according to political insiders.

“They [the rulers] would obviously rather the status quo remain. Dr Mahathir’s defection [to the opposition] has injected serious uncertainty to the political landscape, and the sultans’ comments show they are not pleased with that,” said an opposition politician who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of commenting about the monarchy according to SCMP.