COMMENT Saifuddin Abdullah, a onetime enthusiast-turned-critic of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, is the latest speculator as to the political orientation of his former patron.

“I would not want to describe (Najib) as extreme, but he did shift to the right after the general election. He was very moderate but now he has changed,” Saifuddin, who joined the opposition PKR a fortnight ago, is quoted as saying in an interview with a Chinese language newspaper.

Speculation about the worldview of the prime minister has been the subject of talk in the political salons of the country since Najib took office as PM in April 2009.

Saifuddin feels obliged to hold forth on the subject because he had joined the opposition after a stay in Umno that he must have judged as futile because he was a liberal in a party that has tended not just to suspect liberalism, but to mock it.

After Saifuddin was unseated as the MP for Temerloh in the general election of May 2013, it was speculated that he was sabotaged in his attempt to retain his constituency, losing out to then-PAS Youth chief Nasruddin Hassan.

Malaysians inclined to a liberal worldview found the defeat of an Umno liberal by someone from PAS who is considered a doctrinaire ulama galling, which was why they breathed a sigh of relief when the beaten Saifuddin was appointed by Najib to head a pet project of the PM’s - the Global Movement for Moderation (GMM).

The settng up of GMM was Najib’s way of projecting his credentials as a leader who would take the moderate stance on questions of political ideology and economics.

By appointing Saifuddin to head GMM, Najib signalled that there is a place for a liberal like Saifuddin in both Umno and the government that he headed.

Saifuddin’s acceptance of the post was indicative of a belief that Najib nurtured liberal instincts and would over time come down in favour of a worldview that is moderate and liberal democratic.

This belief was premised on Najib’s lineage and education: as the son of the second PM of the country, Abdul Razak Hussein, who was not autocratic and restored parliamentary democracy after a spell of emergency rule following the race riots of May 13, 1969, Najib, equipped with a liberal education largely acquired in England, was felt to have the pedigree for a moderate and liberal worldview.

The assumption as to the liberal impact of Najib’s nurture is well-founded but the reality of his stances when faced with choices he has had to make has not been liberal.

Najib a closet liberal?

Despite what had seemed illiberal choices, the view persisted - especially in politicians like Saifuddin - that Najib is a closet liberal and hence a moderate.

This persistence was understandable. Factors like lineage and education are not easily dismissed when observers try to divine a person’s political trajectory for character is taken to be the outcome of the interplay between one’s genetic endowment and one’s environment.

But the problem is assessing Najib’s worldview is there maybe none: he is a tabula rasa (blank slate).

On two significant occasions in his past of choices made at critical junctures, he showed that he turns out to be what the attendant pressures and his career interests dictate he should be.

Thus in October 1987 when he was the Umno Youth chief at a time when sectarian passons were running high over the issue of the placement of non-Mandarin speaking administrators in Chinese medium schools, he led a demonstration in Kuala Lumpur that was plainly an incitement to unrest.

He could not have avoided attending the demonstration, but he could have avoided being among the more incendiary of speakers at a gathering in a sports stadium in Kuala Lumpur.

The demonstration, and particularly the inflammatory speeches aired on the occasion, ratcheted up racial tensions which days later led to the launch of ‘Operation Lalang’, in which more than a hundred social and political activists were detained under the draconian Internal Security Act.

Sic months prior to this episode, Najib was faced with another occasion where his choice again was dictated by his career interest.

At what turned out to be pivotal election in Umno in April 1987, Najib, who was deputy leader, was offered the presidency of Umno Youth by incumbent chief Anwar Ibrahim in exchange for support for Team A in its battle with Team B.

Team A was headed by party president and then-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was challenged by Team B’s Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah for the No 1 post.

Najib, the putative liberal, was inclined towards the liberal-leaning Team B but at the eleventh hour switched to Team A when the Youth chief’s post was offered to him on a platter.

History records that the lurch towards authoritarian rule in Mahathir’s 22-year span as PM began after his razor-slim victory in the 1987 Umno party polls.

That year was a dramatic one in country’s political evolution. In two pivotal moments in that year, Najib was a crucial player in its dramas.

The significant datum in both instances was that self-interest predominated over inclinations or instincts - a worldview.

In fact, there was no worldview; there was only an empty slate and events and the pressures they bring, wrote themselves onto it.

Hence speculation as to Najib's political orientation is futile: he is a tabula rasa.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.