While the PM gave early and hopeful hints that his new cabinet will be super-duper exciting with new and clean (another word for less corrupt) faces, the revelation wasn’t that electrifying after all. In reality those so-called 6 (six) new faces are not that new considering you have Koh Tsu Koon who led his party to a complete loss in Penang, Kong Cho Ha who was actually former deputy Finance Minister (promoted to Housing and Local Government Minister), Ahmad Husni was former Deputy Finance Minister (now Finance Minister II) and Anifah Aman who rejected Deputy Transport Minister when he rumored to be crossing over to opposition camp after the 2008 general election.
As expected Najib can do very little to the boring and incompetent cabinet members when he maintained almost 80% of the old guards, if you can consider the 6 new faces as “new” in the first place otherwise it was just another make-up on existing face. To be fair to Najib he can’t do much to trim the XXXL-sized cabinet since he needs to please all the BN component parties. So much so that the people-reject Koh Tsu Koon who was “appointed” the punching-bag target whenever UMNO members need to start a racial-card game, is now a Minister in the PM’s Department in charge of Unity and Performance – an attempt to please the Chinese voters especially in Penang. Now who said lapdog only get bones and not “Pedigree”?Of course the climax was when the newly installed UMNO Youth Chief Khairy Jamaluddin, son-in-law of former premier Abdullah Badawi, gets nothing. Clearly it was an insult to Khairy when his opponent, Mukhriz Mahathir, who lost to him and secured the last place in the just concluded UMNO election, was given the prestige and important post of Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry. This is no ordinary ministry as can be seen on how the former Iron Lady Rafidah Aziz “prospered” under the ministry that she almost chain herself refusing to let go when she was pulled out from the ministry by 10 muscular body-builders. The ministry is simply too yummy considering the APs alone could transform an average-Joe to become a billionaire.
To add salt to injury, Khairy’s deputy, Razali Ibrahim, was made Deputy Youth and Sports Minister. It was an apparent and obvious attempt to embarrass Khairy, not to mention a strategy by Mahathir to force Khairy out from UMNO altogether or at least to put him in cold-storage indefinitely. Sure, Mahathir claimed he didn’t lobby or influence Najib to get his son a seat in the Cabinet and we should believe him because we were born yesterday. Mukhriz must be a real genius to be given the powerful position on a silver plate despite coming out last in the UMNO Youth election. Maybe Najib should try a little harder to convince the people that he’s not under Mahathir’s shadow. With so much fun and powerful influence pulling strings from behind the curtain who needs an official government “adviser” position anyway?Whether the intention to move Deputy PM Muhyiddin Yassin from the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry to Education Ministry is to prepare him to take over the premiership when Najib is tired of walking the corridors of power or an attempt to control him from being too powerful under the former ministry is everybody’s guess. Traditionally a Prime Minister would have become a Minister of Education before. Ministry of International Trade and Industry is perhaps the second most important ministry after Finance Ministry as far as “money cash-flow” is concerned. After a person betrayed his boss logically he would be aware if his second-man would betray him in the same fashion. But then Education Ministry gets the lion share from yearly budget allocation so Muhyiddin should be happy for now.The infamous keris-waver Hishammuddin Hussein who is also the cousin of PM Najib has been
given the powerful post of Home Minister – an attempt to prevent any coup (if any) since Hishammuddin is perhaps Najib’s most trusted knight. Hishammudin is someone who never fails to amuse the people with his past antics so people have already talking about him playing with his new toy – ISA. His predecessor Syed Hamid Albar was dropped even though he has done an incredible job when he was the boss in Home Ministry. Syed Hamid was perhaps the only caring minister who would go the extra miles to protect citizen life by sending them into detention center. One should not misunderstood his kind intention as the ISA detention center is the most secure place on planet earth, better than Alcatraz prison. It seems Hishammuddin would have an uphill task to become a better minister than Syed Albar.Ahmad Zahid is reaping the fruits of his loyalty to Najib when he is appointed the new Defence
Minister, a ministry synonym to Najib himself, not to mention the same ministry that saw the Mongolian beauty Altantuya’s murder allegedly linked to the new PM. Defence Ministry is perhaps one of the most secretive ministries for obvious reason – national security. But using the same “national security” excuse most of the military contracts are based on direct negotiation thus the lack of transparency. However political wise Ahmad Zahid is still living in the past and his political speech or statement was always filled with racial sentiment. Maybe it’s time for him to follow Hishammuddin who has stopped playing with the “keris (dagger)” once he reaches the Vice-President level. Hopefully the old dog can learn new tricks.Of the three new UMNO Vice-Presidents, Shafie Apdal, the minister who is entrusted with Rural and Regional Development Ministry, is
perhaps the one with the heaviest responsibility. A Sabahan, he needs to prove to not only Sabahans but also Sarawakians that he could “seriously” develop the two states after more than half a century of independence yet living without basic necessity such as electricity and clean water in the rural area. The joke (no hard feeling Sabahan) was you shouldn’t rent your rooms to Sabahans because they do not flush the toilet but only do so when the stink is unbearable, not because they are primitive but because they were trained to preserve water in Sabah due to water-rationing. The other Sabahan who was rumored to be jumping ship by refusing a deputy minister post is another happy man when he, Anifah Aman, was appointed the new Foreign Minister. The younger brother of Sabah Minister Minister Musa Aman now may find this new portfolio “too busy” for him to talk about jumping ship since he needs to travel a lot attending international forums.People may be worry now that they have a new Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister – Noh Omar. Known for being in the same league as Syed Hamid Albar (the most hated minister), Bung Mokhtar (monkey king from Sabah), Chor Chee Heung (big time yes-man), Said Yusof (close-one-eye) and Samy Vellu let’s hope the country will not starve to death because of insufficient food produced. The expectation of Samy Vellu and Kayveas’s resurrection didn’t materialize so less entertainment for the people. Now everybody knows why the Chief Minister of Sarawak was beaming with joy after his meeting with Najib before the cabinet announcement – he managed to squeeze his son, Sulaiman Abdul Taib, as the new Deputy Tourism Minister.
Nevertheless Najib’s decision to drop the Badawi-Cronies who are too tainted or unpopular such as Syed Hamid Albar (Home), Azalina Othman Said (Tourism), Muhammad Muhammad Taib (Rural and Regional Development), Amirsham A Aziz (Prime Minister's Department), Ong Ka Chuan (Housing and Local Government), Mohd Zin Mohamed (Works) and Zulhasnan Rafique (Federal Territories) should be lauded. But then it doesn’t mean the current cabinet members are clean compared to the above. It just means the new cabinet members are smarter in hiding their skeletons in the closet. In conclusion, the cabinet looks more like a one big happy crony family than a clean and lean front ready to take the country to a greater height. But the internal fight within UMNO (Khairy and his father’s cronies are totally wiped out) and MCA (sex actor Chua Soi Lek to the battle front?) has not started yet so get ready your popcorns and cokes.
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