[Banyak isu yang mengancam lenyap diam-diam seperti kes Dato' Fauzi dan Khalil Yakub, dan kini kes Daim kereana ada banyak yang mungkin tersangkut. Beginilah cara Mahathir menangani masalah agar semua dilupakan - jika tidak dia akan terheret sama. Bagi pemerhati sikap Mahathir dan Daim - walaupun berdiam sekalipun - adalah jawapan juga. Mereka berdua memang kawan sebab itulah Daim tidakpun melawan dan tiada sesiapa pun dibawa ke muka pengadilan. - Editor]

Is Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob About To Resign?

It is months since Dato' Fauzi Abdul Rahman, in the runup to the UMNO divisional elections, startling disclosed how corrupt the UMNO secretary-general and federal information minister was. UMNO is shell-shocked, feebly invcestigates the charges, and ensures Dato' Fauzi does not resign as state assemblyman to force a byelection it could not possibly retain. A combination of the still popular Dato' Fauzi and PAS inroads into the constitution is too lethal a political c##ktail for UMNO to swallow. Dato' Fauzi set a cat amongst the pigeons. He would have been expelled if he had borne false witness. But UMNO cannot afford it. Indeed, one federal minister pressures him not to resign from UMNO and the state assembly. That he had sent his letter of resignation through the mentri besar of Pahang, Dato' Adnan Yaakub, is of course ignored. UMNO fears Dato' Fauzi, son of a former UMNO cabinet minister, would join PAS. And lose the byelection if held now.

Tan Sri Khalil however is on the skids. He has submitted his resignation as UMNO secretary-general and as information minister. And in time succeeded by the defacto law minister, Dato' Rais Yatim. Yet one more casualty in the unfolding battle royale between He Who Thinks He Is Emperor Of All He Surveys and He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. The latter responds to every attempt to demonise and humiliate him with well-guided missiles into the latter's heartland to send shivers down its collective spine. Dato' Fauzi, amongst a small band of UMNO members, openly says he is a friend of Dato' Seri Anwar. UMNO can do nothing about it, not after what he did to it. Tan Sri Khalil, as UMNO secretary-general, was rooting out Anwar supporters in the divisions when he faces a larger crisis. Much to his chagrin, his wife's step-sister's husband reacted in unaccustomed fury that now forces him to quit office.

UMNO is now beset with other, more serious, crisis; the more important is when Tun Daim Zainuddin resigned as finance minister and UMNO treasurer. But how he got off so lightly suggests now it was a "sandiwara", play acting. He could not produce the party accounts, especially of its share market investments, and yet the UMNO general assembly was barred, through the usual carrot-and-stick, from discussing it. If it was as rumours and off-the-record briefings put it then, more would have come of it. But he resigned rather than inform what he should have. One unmistakeable assumption: he remains in high odour. In 1987, the chief secretary to the government, in announcing the dismissal from the cabinet of two ministers who fell between the slats between the Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah forces, accused them -- the now deputy prime minister Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the de facto law minister Dato' Rais Yatim -- of, amongst other unpardonable failings, leaking state secrets. Yet when Malaysia's chief spy returned last month a visit to Tripoli, he briefed the former finance minister at his house. Why?

Two reasons I can think of: Nothing has changed, and Tun Daim knows where the skeletons are hidden; and he does not reveal all, even to Dr Mahathir. UMNO dislikes him and he held high office to Dr Mahathir's patronage. He, more than any other and including Dr Mahathir, moved to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar who, he feared, would not let him continue to construct a business empire on government time and money. His cronies and close aides fend for themselves, and is why, or so we are told, he is up the creek. Far from it. He might want to clip their wings as well, and find new, less greedy, cronies instead. He negotiates with the forces of Dato' Seri Abdullah, UMNO vice presidents, UMNO power brokers like the Hermit of 30 Jalan Langgak Golf to do as he pleases after Dr Mahathir calls it a day. That has not taken him far. But he probably does not care. His stakes are higher: to succeed Dr Mahathir no less. Far fetched? Not when you look closely at recent events.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my