Malaysia's future - DAP minus Lims plus UMNO minus kleptomaniacs

Malaysiakini:

DAP's future path is clear

by Terence Netto

COMMENT | If democratic politics is a pattern of creative responses to society's inertia and a small margin for change, then the path beckoning the DAP to initiate a break in the current stalemate in national politics is clear.

The present deadlock in national politics is compounded of Malay unease, as Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has put it, at Umno's not holding the reins of central power and general non-Malay discontent with the political status quo.

The upshot: A political logjam which somebody has got to break to allow economic rejuvenation and healthy political development to proceed in the country amidst a pandemic of worldwide proportions.

The DAP ought to initiate the break by doing something creative that will demonstrate quite convincingly its inventiveness in dealing with a deadweight in Malaysian politics.

This is the not quite rational Malay perception of the DAP as being anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-royal.

The DAP's Lim Guan Eng and Lim Kit Siang stir these anathemas in the Malay mind to the quick.

It would greatly help to break the logjam in Malaysian politics if the two stalwarts declined election to the party's central executive committee at its triennial elections that was deferred from its due date last month to later this year because of the pandemic.

One might argue over why these two party strongmen should step aside to placate somewhat irrational Malay fears when Guan Eng has gone to jail in defence of the honour of a Malay girl at the hands of a predator; and when nobody can cite a single instance of Kit Siang publicly uttering views that could be considered as evidence of racial or religious bigotry and as being anti-monarchy.

When is placation of the irrational myopic appeasement and when is it something beneficently constructive, done to get matters moving to the next level?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, there is a jam in the affairs of the Malaysian polity which when creatively broken at its present acutest moment will lead on to fortune.

If bypassed, in another bow to the bard, all of Guan Eng's and his father's lives will be bound in shallows.

A rapprochement between the DAP, sans its two stalwarts, and an Umno, shorn of its kleptocrats, will pave the way to a national concord that will be a new beginning in Malaysian politics.

That politics is now in a deep rut. Things cry out for the Gordian cut to be severed.

Of course, a DAP collaboration with Umno will have to involve the party's partners, PKR and Amanah.

It appears the latter two parties are not much of a problem for Umno in terms of its working with them.

For Umno, however, working with DAP is a problem if the Lims are an integral part of the DAP team.

This is not so much a fault of the DAP than it is a reflection of Umno being trapped by its own anti-DAP propaganda.

Again, why should DAP make the sacrifice of its stalwarts when it is not its fault that Umno is hamstrung by its own propaganda?

Well, politics is about dealing creatively with legacies of the past and expectations for the future.

Certainly, DAP's sacrifice won't entail dropping its demand that Umno gets rid of its kleptocrats. That would be suicidal.

Umno cannot seem to get rid of its kleptocrats, largely due to years of its practice of a policy that an officeholder has first to be found guilty of misconduct in court before being shown the door.

It is presently reaping a huge deficit from disdaining the more sensible policy of asking the indicted to take a leave of absence before returning to office when exonerated by the courts.

Meanwhile, the country writhes under the directionless leadership of Perikatan Nasional, with the Malays wanting Umno returned to the central levers of political power, and Umno declining to oblige by readying for the return by ridding itself of the obviously corrupt.

This combined with the long-frustrated non-Malay desire for a less unmeritocratic and less inegalitarian system of management of the national estate, the country is faced with a logjam.

There is only one party that is gaining from this deadlock: PAS is steadily burrowing its way to the attainment of its fundamentalist Islamic agenda.

This is something, it is safe to say, no other party is comfortable with.

To avert this outcome, and in what is a creative way to break that national deadlock, the historical moment beckons the DAP to set aside its two stalwarts and work, in tandem with its Pakatan Harapan allies, with Umno.

This is an Umno in which its sensible deputy president Mohamad Hassan and progressives like the Johor Menteri Besar Hasni Mohamad have the edge over their inferiors.

The DAP should creatively shore up that edge.



TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades