‘I won’t attack PM – thanks to Dr M’

(The Star) – Former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said that his predecessor’s attacks on him had strengthened his resolve to allow Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to carry out his policies without interference.

“From the experience I went through, I knew it would not be fair if I were to interfere with Najib because I want him to establish himself as the Prime Minister. Let his voice be heard and let him decide the course he should take without having me saying something else or contradicting him,” he said.

“That is why I have remained silent all this time. I believe that once you retire, you are retired,” he said in “A Conversation With Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi” in a soon-to-be-released book titled Awakening.

The “Conversation”, conducted with Prof Bridget Welsh and Prof James U.H. Chin, is found in Chapter One of the book, which contained writings from contributors such as Mohamed Khir Toyo, Liew Chin Tong and Edmund Terence Gomez.

Abdullah said he did not like what his predecessor had done.

“I gave (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) the opportunity to give me his views. I went to see him but he chose to be public in his attacks against me and my administration. I don’t know what he wanted.”

Abdullah also claimed that Dr Mahathir was fully aware that he suffered from a sleeping disorder, yet chose to deride him in public about it.

He said he had been diagnosed with sleep apnea during his tenure as the fifth Prime Minister, which caused him to often doze off without realising it.

“I did tell Dr Mahathir of my condition. So, for him to say that I doze off because I’m not interested in the job is most unkind.”

Abdullah said he had flown to Australia in 2007 to undergo surgery to remove the polyps in his nose which had caused him to experience difficulties breathing while sleeping and caused the disorder.

During his tenure from 2004 to 2008, there were accounts of him apparently dozing off during meetings, causing him to be the subject of some ridicule.

Abdullah said Dr Mahathir’s strained relationship with him following his ascendancy to the top post was due to his “inability to accept any other view except his own”.

He also spoke about the attacks against his son Kamal and son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin, “particularly by Mahathir”.

Kamal, he said, had been a businessman long before he even became Deputy Prime Minister, with the bulk of his business overseas, and that he had never benefited from his father’s position in office.

Abdullah said Khairy, as well as the other “fourth floor boys” – the team which allegedly helped him run the country – had neither been his advisers nor influenced his decisions.

“After the 2004 results, we recruited people from outside of Government, people who believed in the changes I wanted to make. But the establishment, which resisted these changes, instead of working with these boys, proceeded to demonise them,” he said.

Prof Chin said Awakening was the first serious study to chronicle Malaysia’s political history during Abdullah’s tenure and how he had changed the political landscape.

“The interview with Abdullah runs only 38 of the 606 pages. The book features rich perspectives from a diverse range of over 30 experts in their fields including academicians, journalists, politicians and public intellectuals, about his term in office.”

Prof Chin said it was vital that readers read the introduction to gain an understanding of what the book was about, stressing it had “nothing to do with Pak Lah attacking Mahathir”.