Mystifying event and Teories on Malaysia's prime ministership over the years

SYED NADZRI: Here come the sons
Datuk Seri Najib Razak is virtually the new Umno leader, while Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein and Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir are currently sitting pretty in the nomination standings that precede the party's climactic elections due in four months.

They are not vying for the same positions in Umno, Malaysia's principal political party, but if Hishammuddin and Mukhriz take after Najib to win their respective contests, they will have a date with destiny, for an uncanny pattern will emerge.

The three men will not only be following in their fathers' footsteps in climbing the country's perilous political ladder, they might just do so in a sequence of succession that could be remarkably identical to the one their fathers went through some three decades ago -- Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, Najib's father, as prime minister from 1970 to 1976, Tun Hussein Onn, Hishammuddin's father (1976-1981) and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Mukhriz's father (1981-2003).

This is provided, of course, that these political aristocrats get over their immediate but treacherous hurdles from now until March, as victory -- even for Najib who has clinched an unassailable lead in nominations for president -- can never be taken for granted, as many in the party would attest.

Mukhriz, especially, is not guaranteed a win in his fight for the Umno Youth's top post despite piling on the nominations from the divisions week after week.

But the possibility of the exact order of succession being followed and history repeating itself will be made clearer when Najib is officially installed president and he has under him Hishammuddin as one of the vice-presidents and Mukhriz as Youth chief. Though the positions of vice-president and Youth chief are not by any means automatic tickets to the top, it does follow by convention that these posts do carry a lot of push to climb further.

It will be momentous, therefore, if the pattern runs, mystifying even -- just like the much-hyped RAHMAN theory about the country's prime ministership over the years, each alphabet in Rahman denoting the name of a person assuming the post: R for Rahman (as in Tunku Abdul Rahman), A for Abdul Razak (as in Tun Abdul Razak), H for Hussein (as in Hussein Onn), M for Mahathir (as in Dr Mahathir), A for Abdullah (as in Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi the present prime minister) and N set to be Najib.

Najib is well on the way to becoming the seventh president of Umno, and the country's sixth prime minister. The approval ratings for him, as they say, have broken through the ceiling and the only thing left now is for him to formally take over the reins from Abdullah in March next year.

And when that happens, it will mark the nascent ascendancy of the second generation of the political blue blood. It would also be exactly 39 years since Razak took over as prime minister from Tunku in 1970 during a tumultuous period in the country's history.

It is highly likely too that when Najib assumes the top office, Education Minister Hishammuddin would also be well placed in the Umno heirarchy to be considered next in line, just like his father then under Razak. And the striking similarity is that his Dad, too, was education minister before being elevated to deputy prime minister upon the death of Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman in 1973.

Going by the number of nominations he has collected from the divisions, Hishammuddin is now the overwhelming favourite to become vice-president, which will put him within striking distance of the No. 2 and subsequently top of the party heap in the future.

Mukhriz, likewise, seems to be in a comfortable position to be elected leader of the Youth movement, judging by the nominations he has been getting from the divisions. Though interestingly, none of the past prime ministers had ever held this post, the Umno Youth chief is always regarded as a position of great significance in Umno because it is seen as a stepping stone to bigger things.

Najib himself held that position for six years from 1987 and Hishammuddin, perhaps the longest-serving, is into his 11th year before he moves on. Others who have served in the post include Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, now opposition leader, for five years.

Assuming that things go well for the three, the likely scenario after March is Najib as Umno president at 56 years old, Hishammuddin as vice-president at 47 and Mukhriz as Youth chief at 44.

And, if fate would have it that the order of succession is somehow repeated from history, we would have Najib-Hishammuddin-Mukhriz as Umno's seventh, eighth and ninth president following exactly the perfect order of their fathers Razak-Hussein-Mahathir as third, fourth and fifth presidents.