Malaysian politics is a soap opera, but a very boring one. I don’t think people have stopped paying attention to what politicians are doing is not only because they are disillusioned by selfish pursuits of power, but also because they follow the same, boring script.
The tussle between UMNO, BERSATU, and PAS now is almost identical to what we had gone through with PakatanHarapan. The origins, stratagems, responses, methods, and supporting actors follow the same patterns.
The major theme for tussle is power and this is not shocking. But the origin of the struggle is from the fundamental imbalance of power in government. There is almost a replication in Muhyiddin’s governing BERSATU with Mahathir’s governing BERSATU, where in both instances BERSATU takes up the prime minister and senior ministership positions even though they are not the largest party.
This has rarely happened in governments around the world because it offends the natural sense of fairness albeit it may be perfectly legal.
Naturally, the upshot from this imbalance of power was that the largest party – in this case, UMNO – would harbourresentment and feel like they should take back what is theirs. Even if the parliamentarians of UMNO are willing to concede to BERSATU at the beginning, this will not last long because the grouses from the ground will creep to the fore. Back then, the resentment harboured by PKR grassroots members became the motivating force to push BERSATU’s Mahahirout of his position so that their leader, Anwar, could assume prime ministership. The understandable resentment from the grassroots was exacerbated when Mahathir has shown enormous hesitance to give way.
This is not too different from the Muhyiddin’s roadblock in the form of fear of making tough decisions to appoint an UMNO leader as deputy prime minister.
Second, the stratagem deployed by Muhyiddin’s BERSATU now also takes a page from the Mahathir playbook two years ago: Drive a wedge within the largest party. Now, what Muhyiddin has done was to divide UMNO into at least two factions, the ones led by the fallouts of Zahid Hamidi and Najib Razak, and the other who benefited from Muhyiddin’s privileges and positions, called Kluster Menteri.
Back then, Mahathir used the faction led by Azmin Ali to drive a wedge within PKR so that it divides the party, creates chaos internally, and produces one of the two outcomes. Either it distracts the leader and shows the public the utter incompetence of the leader, or it causes enough animosity and betrayal that the party’s parliamentarians would leave the party altogether. The latter was the outcome for PKR when Azmin’s Gang of 10 left to join BERSATU.
The premise behind this stratagem is taken from human psychology where it assumes people are inherently greedy and selfish. If you offer ministerial positions to someone, you are betting on them turning on their friends and the party they swore loyalty. This is additionally effective if you offer it to people who do not have much going for them – the forgotten, abandoned, the people who never deserved it in the first place.
It is, therefore, not a coincidence that the ministerial positions under Muhyiddin and Mahathir’s government offered to the largest party were from underwhelming parliamentarians. This would promise even more resentment within the largest party, thus making chaos creation a near certainty within the party.
Third, the response of the largest party was also similar: They call the chaos within a form of ‘democracy’. When Najib was asked whether UMNO is now divided into different factions, he used the response that was identical to what Anwar said of PKR when it was deeply divided two years ago.
He said that there was nothing wrong in the party, and any disagreements is natural within the party. In fact, this is a form of democracy. The reframing of internal division and chaos as a favourable form of democracy is designed to hold your head above water when you are drowning within.
Fourth, the supporting actors have acted in a way that was similar in the face of power. In the previous PH case, it was the changing attitude of Amanah; in PN’s case, it was PAS. When PAS first entered government, it was with the blessing and partnership with UMNO, under the umbrella of MuafakatNasional. But for the pursuit of a Malay-Muslim government, PAS would probably not have wanted to work with BERSATU, which still contains personalities they consider enemies.
But Muhyiddin understood human psychology and promoted many PAS leaders to important positions in government, making them beholden to him. Now, PAS is significantly more inclined to BERSATU’s camp than UMNO in the event of a break-up.
In the previous government, Amanah played this role. They were people who fought in the opposition with PKR and its leader Anwar Ibrahim, to jail, the streets, and the august house, but when Mahathir rewarded them handsomely with positions, they started to indicate change of heart.
They were willing to wait it out before Anwar becomes prime minister, by urging patience and calm, which could have contributed to buying time for BERSATU’s scheme to succeed.
Fifth, the method of ousting the leader of the largest party was oddly familiar. A few days ago, a booklet called “30 DalilMengapa Ahmad Zahid Perlu Letak Jawatan Sebagai PresidenUmno (30 reasons why Ahmad Zahid should resign as Umnopresident)” was circulated in UMNO to accelerate the ouster of Zahid Hamidi.
While PH did not have any booklet of this nature, UMNO used to have a booklet called “50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar TidakBoleh Jadi PM” (published in 2005) that was recirculated to dampen the legitimacy and credibility of Anwar when he wanted to become prime minister two years ago.
Back then, we had 50 reasons, now for Zahid, we only had 20.
In all of this, it begs the question of why are political scripts so repetitive, uncreative, and utterly boring? Politics is boring because the players are boring.
We are living in the legacy of a political culture that is corrupt by power, money, and fame. In such a culture, creativity, innovation, and ideas were not rewarded and mediocrity, play-safe, and copycats are promoted to the top.
That is why it is called “corruption”, a Latin word to mean “spoil”. Because if something if spoiled, it could never run. If no one has the courage to throw out the entire wheel and start again, the output will always be the same no matter what you feed into it.
Maybe that is also why the political game now attracts the oldest people, who want entry and re-entry in a million ways. So that they could do it over and over and over again.
(Malaysiakini: https://m.malaysiakini.com/news/564118)
