COMMENT Malaysia's second prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein was a member of the Fabian Society, a socialist forerunner of the British Labour Party that rejected the revolutionary seizure of power in favour of a gradualist approach.

His son, Najib Razak, the current premier, though no socialist, is a Fabian of sorts, too. The Fabians derived their name from the Roman consul, dictator and general Fabius Maximus, who was known as Fabius the Delayer after his military strategy.

Let us understand Fabius before we return to Najib's political strategy.

Between the years 218 to 201BC, Rome and the north African city-state of Carthage were engaged in the Second Punic War for control over the Mediterranean. The great Carthaginian general Hannibal rampaged across the Italian peninsula for over 15 years, inflicting crushing military defeats upon Rome and causing political upheaval by plundering the countryside and turning Rome's provincial Italian allies against it...