When Mahathir began his campaign against Najib more than a year and a half ago, it was given little chance. The former Prime Minister had been out of office for more than a decade and was regarded as a loud but irrelevant force. But political analysts in Kuala Lumpur say his campaign has been gaining traction over the 1MDB issue
“Realistically Najib’s situation is untenable,” a member of the Mahathir faction said. “Certainly he will fight back but whether he resigns or not point is he is he cannot function as PM.”The vehicle for his surrogates’ attack on Najib is 1MDB, the five-year-old state investment fund which as of March had amassed debts of RM49.1 billion (US$14.04 billion) against assets of RM51.4 billion, registering losses of Malaysian ringgit 63.5 billion at the end of the quarter, mainly on huge finance costs.
Mahathir and his allies have been dissatisfied with Najib’s performance for more than two years over a wide range of other issues as well, however. The 1MDB issue, described as “the mother of the mother of the mother of all scandals” by Democratic Action Party MP Tony Pua in an Asia Sentinel article on December 8, has become the vehicle with which the octogenarian hopes to skewer the Prime Minister.
It has gained additional momentum because of allegations that Jho Low Taek, a hard-partying young friend of the Najib family, may have used Malaysian government guarantees to back the making of The Wolf of Wall Street, a hit movie starring Leonardo di Caprio, and to fund his attempt to take over three of London’s most prestigious hotels.Najib is the chairman of the 1MBD advisory board and the motivating force, apparently on the advice of Jho Low, as he is known, a putative whiz kid who is alleged to have steered the fund first into a disastrous alliance on oil exploration on the advice of a Saudi prince he went to school with in London.
When the exploration failed, opposition figures alleged, the money was invested in forex trades in yen. The trades were not successful and, opposition lawmakers alleged, the money disappeared. That was the first of a long string of financial disasters that put 1MDB deep in the red without adequate capital to meet obligations
Ending a decade of rule that critics said had become increasingly authoritarian and marred by nepotism and corruption. 
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