COMMENT It is bad news for those who probably thought that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak would resign under the weight of the 1MDB scandal. On the contrary, Najib seems to have regained his composure and is on the offensive to weed out his detractors, in stages!

Shakespeare's drama 'Macbeth' is a good starting point to understand why some people are driven to do extreme things under particular circumstances.

Macbeth was a gentle general who secured victories for Scotland, but pushed by his wife Lady Macbeth, he murdered Duncan, the King of Scotland, to become the king.

In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth tells her husband “but screw your courage to the sticking place, And we'll not fail". What she said to Macbeth was that if pushed his courage to the furthest, he would not fail.

Men and women do great things under difficult and trying circumstances. Cowards and the timid are pushed to do unimaginable acts of bravery under certain circumstances. It is not the brave who do heroic acts all the time.

But sometimes, even the coward and weak are able to perform acts that are quite unimaginable. Macbeth was a good general and had a conscience. However, he overrode his good qualities under the advice of his wife to murder Duncan, the meek.

Najib not aggressive or wicked

But Najib is not an aggressive or wicked prime minister of the country. In many ways, he is far more liberal compared to the earlier prime ministers. Like Duncan, his only weakness could be his wife and for that matter, his close circle of friends and cronies.

He probably had a conscience before things went terribly wrong for him and his colleagues.

It was only after the 1MDB financial scandal broke loose, that Najib was driven to the point of either resigning from his post and facing the consequences of such an action, or to hit back at this detractors.

In the end, Najib chose to fight back, not because he was Bugis "warrior" but because the consequences of resigning from his post were totally unimaginable.

For him to remove certain Umno leaders from the cabinet and the sacking of attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail, were actions taken to safeguard his position and those of his close friends.

This is not to mention the other actions taken against the whistleblowers for harping on the 1MDB issue.

For Najib, it was the fear of his political survival and the fear of consequences of his removal as prime minister that drove him to do desperate things. Yes, desperate men do desperate things when their imagined perception of reality overtakes their rational selves.

Najib might have temporarily won the war, but the battle looms in the horizon. He might have fired the winning shot, but then he is unable to prevent the gathering of broader coalition of forces to unseat him.

Najib has indeed provided the perfect opportunity for a sharp division to develop within his party Umno, supposedly the "last line" of his defence.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the foremost foe of Najib, is waiting on the sidelines for the removal of Najib. Now, with his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin removed from the cabinet, Najib can expect that the Malaysian political scene to regain a new vitality.

It might even be appropriate to say that there is no possibility to “the  end of history in Malaysia”, in the words of Francis Fukuyama!

P RAMASAMY is Deputy Chief Minister II of Penang and the state assemblyperson for Perai.

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