Abdullah Badawi's administration finally declares war on Tun Mahathir

In a long press conference after Parliament, Minister in Prime Minister's department, Nazri Aziz, made the first formal challenge of the administration to Tun Mahathir.

His main point was that Mahathir is the former PM and still a member of UMNO. But he is being a more effective opposition that the opposition ever was.

By Nazri's logic, Mahathir should be a man ("jantan") and resign from UMNO. Then Nazri will take him on 'fair and square'.

What's UMNO membership got to do with it? And don't you think the whole country already knows that the UMNO Supreme Council already considered sacking Tun M from UMNO but decided against it? Apparently, this occurred during the Supreme Council meeting last week and they decided that the possibility of a backlash from Tun M's supporters in UMNO was too real and possibly too powerful to be discounted. A move to sack Tun M from UMNO could be counter productive in that it will split UMNO if the motion was defeated.

What I find most telling is Nazri's assertion that Tun M shouldn't criticise the PM's son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin. Nazri's asserts that an elder statesman like Tun M shouldn't concern himself with a young and inexperienced child like Khairy.

More wool over the public's eyes? If Raja Petra Kamarudin and the Khairy Chronicles are to be believed (and I'm finding myself believing it more after 3 sources have been making references to Khairy being the central figure in all this.

1. Matthias Chang,
2. Tun M - although in the form of veiled references to Oxbridge educated advisors to the PM on Lvl 4 of Putrajaya having more power than the person on Lvl 5 ie. the PM, and now
3. Nazri.

Well, a couple of things are becoing clear to me.

1. Khairy Jamaluddin is definitely the point. The increasingly frequent references to him and his mates in the govt and Malaysian media apparatus says as much.

2. The "elegant silence" is not working. It hasn't convinced the public that there is nothing that the govt needs to answer for. And it certainly hasn't silenced Tun M. Hence, the barking of the Abdullah administration mouthpiece.