Raf for now: Don't look back in anger!

Yahoo

9 hours ago

JUNE 19 — It only took 70 years to get here. Not sure it'll last, but for now, it's real.
In Malaysian mainstream politics when top positions are vied for in major parties, incumbents when defeated depart in the worst possible way. So much so, within parties, the cautionary tale is that leadership battles can end the party.
Which is why, the decision by Rafizi Ramli post-defeat to stick around has major significance.
All the way from Tengku Razaleigh vs Mahathir Mohamad in 1987 to Anwar Ibrahim vs Ghafar Baba in 1993. Even further back, in 1951, Abdul Rahman Abdul Hamid replaced exiting Onn Jaffar. Over in PKR, the ambitious left when defeated even if not the incumbent.
In 2018, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar chose to stay in Umno after losing the presidential race to challenge Zahid Hamidi, but it was low stakes. It was less than two months after Umno lost national power, and incumbent Najib Razak with mounting legal cases opted out. Zahid till then was only deputy president picked by Najib after the tumultuous sacking of Muhyiddin Yassin.
Long story short, Malaysian politics never matured to the point it was OK to lose an internal election and stay put. Acrimony accompanies open contests.
The key premise which is unspoken is that members are pawns with no agency except to follow leaders. Leaders manage utilising backroom deals among the elites. Which is what repulsed Rafizi that a leadership decision to deny members the right to pick a president and deputy president was ignored by a substantial number of leaders to knock him off his perch.
The man who rather less democracy can now champion more democracy in the party.
Despite the trouncing by no less than the president's daughter after a single term, Rafizi pledges to be a party man.
But not as minister, just a backbencher. Also, he moonlights as a podcaster and promises to be all fire and brimstone. Free of governmental roles, he is Rafizi Unchained.
His vanquisher Nurul Izzah Anwar is warned.
Rafizi may offer a new kind of competitive politics. He rebranded his old restrained Yang Bakar Menteri (He who grills ministers), to a more nuclear Yang Berhenti Menteri (The unchained minister).
While it is cute to keep the YBM abbreviation, it is not exactly a leap forward, is it? To define oneself as what you were, rather than what you aspire to be. The people want to be inspired, well at least his supporters want to lift him up.
YBM is less Malay Dilemma and more of a derivative of Khairy's Keluar Sekejap (Temporarily out).
But what is in a name? Based on public perception, a lot apparently.
Nevertheless, his platform can transform local politics because it is from a senior politician from the party heading the national unity government. He has personally known the prime minister since he was an adolescent and worked closely with him.
Khairy speaks about his experience weighed against developments, Rafizi can speak about current developments intimately and intimate truths. And pals like Chang Lih Kang and Akmal Nasir serve inside the administration. He also gets to attend Parliament for the next two years.
News, not hearsay, gets to him fast.
So, he'll draw a crowd.
Which brings us to his nemesis and now in the spotlight, Nurul Izzah.
Can Rafizi provoke broader discussions and can Nurul Izzah and those inside, lead and take on the better thoughts from her party opponent, clearly both have 2028 in mind when the party president post is vacant? — Bernama pic
Cricket, lads
They will knock heads, that's totally expected.
However, Rafizi's decision to stay deserves applause. Malaysia deserves to rise above pettiness.
So too does Nurul Izzah, for not disparaging her predecessor and claiming there is space for all inside the party. Her ability to narrate an emergence separate from her father is also an attraction; handled wrongly, a distraction.
Where does it leave PKR?
The path to parties of ideologies, rather than parties of personalities, is through the corridor of open disputation. Parties are dull and lack meaning without dissent.
Politics is adversarial by design. How can better ideas elevate to the top without examination by those most vocally against them?
The thing to ask for is fairness in the proceedings.
Can Rafizi provoke broader discussions and can Nurul Izzah and those inside, lead and take on the better thoughts from her party opponent, clearly both have 2028 in mind when the party president post is vacant?
Staying in lane
In the last 10 years, our politics after the end of the Barisan Nasional's monopoly has been about parties finding their sweet spot.
PAS was assumed to be the walking wounded after a painful split with Pakatan Rakyat leading to the 2018 General Election. Them just being PAS, without any modern ideas, just a religious conviction appeased a base which was not over-enamoured by modern ideas and submits willingly to religion as the basis of government, and did not appreciate premature eulogies for the party.
They emerged with more seats than they did previously with Pakatan.
The Borneo parties in varying speeds have accelerated to the singular position that state dignity is only possible through state parties. The results and the continued conversion of politicians back the premise.
Bersatu sticks to 'we are more puritanical about our race politics than everyone else' as a selling point but as leaders abandon the cause, they may not regain a pulse without artificial resuscitation.
Umno, MCA and MIC are at sea. They have their ageing supporters but no fresh take.
DAP refuses to let go of Chinese chauvinism no matter how tantalising an alternate reality is to their core leaders.
All of them, at best, hold on to their DNA with no apology.
Principles are nice and exclusion is deplorable, but power is nicest and do turn away when people point out your hypocrisy, is the persisting belief in Malaysian politics.
'When they go low, we go high'
The line associated with former first lady Michelle Obama, might just be the ticket for PKR. At least with this new Rafizi and Nurul Izzah dynamics.
Rather than find a racial, religious or regional niche to thrive, PKR can resist the trite and use the presence of dissension inside the party to advertise the party being the first to join the evolution of Malaysian politics.
The tests are almost here.
Rafizi as former economics minister has much to say about the SST in motion and the retreat from measures to end subsidies. He is bound to say the prime minister should reconsider. The new deputy president, even when looking in from the outside, must back the PM and his Cabinet.
The how it manages clashes of ideas is how PKR can demonstrate to all Malaysians, it is indeed going higher.
The stage is set, however all you read is theory for now.
The how is completely in their hands. I fear the past may overwhelm them and they too revert to type, to niches. That they wash their hands rather than guide members to better.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.