COMMENT | It is odd that former premier Najib Razak has reportedly called Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu a "joker," who talks about "fish curry" while on board a warship.

Having lost the 14th general election (GE14) badly on May 9 and is now caught in a legal imbroglio over 1MDB and potentially many "mini 1MDBs," the last thing Najib wants to be doing is to cast the first proverbial stone in a glass house.

Imagine the shards of glass that will come crashing down. In fact, the cracks are already there to see.

The Defence Ministry has been helmed twice by Najib. No one has had that privilege. Not "King Ghaz," the late Ghazali Shafie, who is known as a foreign policy maestro.

Not even Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the seventh prime minister, who is known to take the bulls by the horns; as he did when he ripped Umno and PAS apart in GE14.

A double stint of Najib, therefore, should have allowed the Defence Ministry to stay clear from any unfortunate controversial issues. Yet, neither tenure did, despite a combined service of some 14 years clocked by Najib.

In fact, when one is in the military barracks, there are jokes galore about the ineptness of Najib but potentially Hishammuddin Hussein too, his cousin, who too donned the mantle of defence minister.

Wasn't the latter who tweeted that the terrorists in Lahad Datu were clad in "slippers" and "sarongs," and not to be deemed a threat?

Yet precisely a day later the terrorists went on a rampage, resulting in the first armed invasion of Malaysia since the end of Konfrontasi in 1965.

Najib and Hisham, for the lack of better word, appeared to have muck things up when they were at the top of the...