The biggest threat to support for Prime Minister Najib Razak is from voters facing rising costs, not the fallout of the 1MDB scandal or discontent among some sections in Umno, or the Opposition, according to a report in Bloomberg.
The BN won the 2013 General Election by its slimmest margin yet, helped mainly by rural Malay support. However, it lost the popular vote for the first time.
The Bloomberg report quoted Norshahril Saat, a fellow at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore as saying: “Homogeneity in Umno, like all political parties, is a challenge. It seems Najib still has strong support within Umno. But Najib needs to ensure he gets the economy moving again. That is the concern of the masses, both in rural and urban areas.”
The report said whether local Umno leaders remained quiet or not would depend in no small part on the economy.
It noted that growth is forecast to expand at the slowest pace in seven years in 2016.
As a net oil exporter, Malaysia has been hit by a two-year slump in energy prices, while China’s slowdown has cut demand from its second-biggest export market. Also, the ringgit has see-sawed, turning Asia’s best performance in the first three months of 2016 to the region’s worst in the current quarter.
The report said even as party leaders publicly pledged support for Najib, some had privately expressed frustration over premier — and concern that if they say too much they could be ostracised.
Najib has removed some of his most vocal critics from government or Umno. Muhyiddin Yassin, for instance, was dropped as deputy prime minister and remains suspended as party deputy-president.
The report said ethnic Malays were the bulwark of the BN coalition, and that Najib needed to keep their support. Which explains why Najib recently restated that Umno’s primary agenda is protecting the interests of ethnic Malays.
“Umno will stand firm to preserve the strength and honour of the Malays,” he said on May 11. “The interests of the race will always be the main agenda in Umno’s struggle.”
Najib, in fact, says the report, has continued and in some cases expanded policies put in place by his father — Malaysia’s second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein — that give preferential treatment to Bumiputeras, the country’s Malay and indigenous people.
The report said Najib had endured one of his toughest years in four decades in politics, battling graft accusations and fending off a joint campaign by Muhyiddin and former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad against him.
Although Najib has denied wrongdoing in connection with the 1MDB scandal, and although Umno divisional chiefs have publicly backed him, some Umno members feel uneasy.
“The continued support for the current leadership is there and it’s strong — there’s no doubt about that,” said Suhaimi Ibrahim, an Umno Lipis division committee member. “I must admit that it is not 100 per cent as some members are unhappy about some things.”
While Suhaimi didn’t elaborate, some party officials alluded to undercurrents in Umno over eroded trust in Najib, asking not to be identified given the risk of repercussions, the report said.
“Umno is still united, but not like before, and to some extent it has lost its fire,” the report quoted an unnamed official at Umno’s Kuala Lumpur headquarters as saying. “Great damage has been done.”
“Umno has a feudal political culture that may keep the party behind Najib even as the scandals make his leadership appear ‘untenable’,” said Universiti Sains Malaysia political science professor Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid. The party structure also limits any push for real change, he said.
“Umno politics is the politics of patronage, and as long as they have connections with levers of power, they will not reform,” he said. “Najib’s government is a weak government — in parliament or by popular vote — and they still haven’t reformed. They don’t have to because they can remain in power.”
Meanwhile, Najib’s press secretary Tengku Sariffuddin Tengku Ahmad told Bloomberg News the fact that the BN had secured a bigger majority in the recent Sarawak state polls reflected the public’s confidence that the BN was delivering. It also showed that Najib was very capable of leading the BN into the next general election, he added.