A political move that backfired

Borneo Post

4 days ago

The Parliament of Malaysia – the only place where an incumbent Prime Minister may legally be voted out of office. — Bernama photo
MANY Malaysian politicians are being innovative for the wrong reason.
In Peninsular Malaysia, for instance, within the past 10 years, they have made political moves in order to acquire power and authority fast by devising stratagems such as 'tebuk atap' (by punching a hole in the roof) or 'masuk pintu belakang' (back-door entry).
To make their schemes look like being constitutional, they used the Statutory Declaration to influence the legislators.
Legislators were made to swear on a piece of paper to support the appointment of the candidate for premiership, cocksure that the King would agree to their proposal without question.
Another device
On July 26 this year, a new device for toppling an elected government was tried out.
Opposition politicians used a gathering of thousands of party supporters at one spot in Kuala Lumpur and regarded the size of the crowd, real or bloated manifolds, as the sole criterion with which to convince the public at large and, in particular the supporters of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, should step down as Prime Minister without delay.
However, one glaring flaw of this version of a coup d'état was that the organisers were not able to name a member of Parliament as the PM-designate during the rally, or soon after.
It did not look like they had agreed beforehand that one MP from their group would be their nominee for the post.
It has been a week now since the 'Turun Anwar' rally was held.
At the time of writing this article, there has been no inkling that the incumbent PM has planned to call a press conference during which he would announce his resignation.
Then one is tempted to wonder if the rally of 500,000 participants (some estimates say only 18,000 at most), had really achieved what its organisers had planned.
To me, it begins to look like that this stratagem of mob rule has been counter-productive or ineffective in terms of forcing the incumbent Prime Minister to throw in the towels.
Anwar's opponents have made him a martyr!
Political crisis?
Seeing in the social media and hearing from friends in Kuala Lumpur about the political fights for hegemony among the Malay politicians, many people in Sarawak I talked to are concerned about the eruption of a political crisis, and consequentially, of the possible side-effects of the political rifts in the peninsula.
Those Sarawakians supporting the Unity Government and acknowledging the leadership of PM Anwar as the Chief Executive of the Unity Government, have a stake in that government.
Resignation of the Prime Minister may be followed by the resignations of the other members of his Cabinet.
The prospects of a full-blown political crisis are real; such crisis at this juncture will do more harm than good to the Federation.
The Sarawakians in the Cabinet, in the Senate and in Parliament (as ordinary back–benchers) are from a coalition of parties, which had enabled the formation of the Unity Government a couple of years ago.
I don't think they would undo what they had helped build.
Instead, I think they would like to continue serving under it until the end of its term.
There is law governing the elections of legislators and the appointment of the Prime Minister. Why ignore all these?
Should the Federal Government collapse consequent upon the loss of the majority of seats in Parliament, the parliamentarians from the coalition parties, including Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) would be in a real dilemma.
Either they join the government formed by the Opposition MPs, or they turn themselves into Opposition.
That would be awkward for Sarawakians.
Either way, a political vacuum will be created, and that is a perfect recipe for a full-scale political problem, which we can do without.
At the risk of repeating myself, I say that any political group aiming to rule this country via the public rallies to unseat the incumbent head of the government and using any scheme other than the process of elections carried out according to the relevant law, would deserve to be censored by all peace-loving people in this country.
These Opposition politicians would have deserved some respectability had they done the decent thing: proposing the motion of 'No Confidence' in Anwar's leadership as the Prime Minister at the right venue: the Parliament.
There, they can 'tear' him to pieces and pile heaps of the wrongdoings that the PM has allegedly done – or imagined to have done.
Instead, they resorted to mass psychology now backfiring. The result: they have made Anwar a martyr!
Watching all this from Borneo, it seems to me that the organisers of that rally in Kuala Lumpur did not respect the feelings of the other Malaysians, many in Peninsular Malaysia, and many more in the Borneo states.
How or what they think, or how they feel about the possibility of a serious political crisis, does not seem to matter to the rally organisers.
To me, such attitude is un-Malaysian!
One thing that the July 26 rally organisers should have anticipated was that the supporters of the Prime Minister could also organise rallies of their own, saying: 'What they can do, we can do better!'
They have the means with which to reach their supporters and the public for support by exerting influence on the main official mass media and their cyber-troopers are ready to do battle.
In terms of psychological warfare, during the Communist insurgency in Malaya, the governing authorities were always in a better position than that of the guerrillas.
Our rally organisers ought to learn from history.
Smart, the Anwar supporters have not resorted to holding rallies of their own.
No need for these. The opponents of your Boss have made him a martyr!
Do they not realise that the other Malaysians in the Boneo states are watching the intense politicking there with a growing concern?
I note that this political rivalry in the early days of Malaysia and now, after so many years in Malaysia, the rivalry is still as intense as it was 60 years ago.
What's happening, and why?
The intense competition for political hegemony in Peninsular Malaysia does not bode well for the Malaysians in the Borneo states.
Please stop me from elaborating.
Before I finish this, I saw something disgusting on social media: the scene of an image that resembled Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, being flogged in public!
I think that any group of politicians aspiring to rule the Federation in the future and using this method of punishment, can forget about looking at Sarawak for help to form a federal government.
To describe the act as being 'inhuman' is almost generous!
* The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist's own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper. malaysia politics Sarawak tebuk atap