I refer to the letter Push for Ku Li to be PM.

While I concur with the writer who wants Pakatan Rakyat to push for Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to become our next prime minister, I am afraid it is already 10 years to late for him to become premier of this country.

Asking Pakatan Rakyat lawmakers to support Ku Li to become the next premier of this country is wishful thinking as the political equation in this country favours the former deputy premier, Anwar Ibrahim, to helm the country rather than Ku Li who is still a member of Parliament from Umno.

Ku Li has tried twice to win the coveted post of the president of Umno but because of the quota system practiced by the party’s which favours the incumbent, he failed to dislodged both Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Abdul Razak from becoming presidents of Umno cum prime ministers of this country.

Ku Li has lost his influence in the party as he was in the political wilderness ever since he left the party to form Semangat 46 after he narrowly lost the Umno president’s post to the incumbent Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1986.

New leaders have since joined the party after he was in the opposition and he has he lost his grassroots supporters who can make a difference if he were to contest the top post in Umno.

Ku Li, Musa Hitam, Rais Yatim, Sharir Samad were the few rising stars of Umno who had the potential to become the president as well as the prime minister of this country but had their political careers cut short by Mahathir who only wanted pliant ministers to work under him and he brooked no dissent from those in the party as well as in the cabinet.

And yet Mahathir has the cheek to complain that his replacement is not a good prime minister although he personally picked Pak Lah as his replacement when he retired from office in 2003.

The former premier had failed to groom good leaders to replace him and by having four deputies serving him one after another, he managed to ‘kill off’ potential political rivals for more than two decades.

Umno is now bereft of outstanding leaders who can move the crowd to support the party in the next polls. The likes of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Razak Hussein, Hussein Onn, Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman and their ilk who served the party diligently without dipping their hands into the till are no more in the oldest party which has ruled the nation for more than 50 years.

The present crop of leaders are not of the same calibre of the old guard as most of them seem to be involved in one corruption case or another and think that the high posts they hold give them immunity. They plunder government assets as they please.

Ku Li who is in the 70s does not have the luxury of time to fight another battle to win the president post’s in the coming party’s election and his clarion call for the present government to form a unity government with the opposition front has fallen on the deaf ears of the powers-that- are.

Ku Li will be known as the best prime minister the country never had. Such is our predicament in that all good leaders were ‘pensioned’ off by the former premier in order to retain his power. Now the country has mediocre leaders who only know how to talk but cannot deliver their promises.

Really, the root cause of our economic and political turmoil can be traced back to Mahathir’s iron- clad rule when corruption and abuse of power by his ministers flourished for as long as they did not challenge him for the top post.

The old ex-premier cannot wash his hands of the ills the country is facing now. His handpicked successor was a failure and even the incoming premier seems to have too much political baggage which can derail our nation from the path out of the economic mess that we are in.

The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting dimmer by the day if we look at all the mess the country is facing now. Ku Li would have become a better premier but Umno delegates would rather pick leaders who can grease their palms instead of genuine leaders who have the interests of both the party and nation at heart. What a shame.