Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has many supporters confident in his leadership but remain silent, said Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak.

“Dear (Najib), there are many Malaysians who support you but just wish to remain silent because they feel it is pointless to argue about something that will never get resolved anyway.

“These Malaysians have confidence in your leadership and will continue to stand behind you. Keep the faith and rest assured you are not alone,” Salleh said in a blog post today, in a birthday wish for Najib.

Salleh pointed out that this is Najib’s 40th year in politics and those have been very challenging years, especially in the last 10 years when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad “made a comeback to the Malaysian political scene”.

Any person would have given up by now, instead of enduring ten years of “constant barraging” from Mahathir, Salleh said.

Najib is probably the first prime minister of Malaysia to receive such harassment from a former prime minister, he added.

“Nowhere else in the world does this happen where an ex-prime minister demonstrates utter disrespect and contempt for a sitting prime minister.

“And this is not something new but something that Mahathir has been perpetuating over the last 10 years and against two prime ministers,” he said.

He said that Mahathir had initially pestered Najib to oust then-prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, but when Najib expressed support for Abdullah, Mahathir began attacking him instead.

Since then, after Najib took over as prime minister, Salleh said that Mahathir has continued to attack him on all sorts of issues, with 1MDB being the latest.

Mahathir began vocally criticising Najib and his brainchild 1MDB last year.