When will Harapan stop 'hoping' for the number?

Malaysiakini:

When will Harapan stop 'hoping' for the number?

by Wong Chin Huat

COMMENT | Any number that Anwar Ibrahim craves would expire on July 16, 2023, when the 14th Parliament must stand dissolved. That is 27 months from now. The closer to that date the number is attained (if ever), the lesser the value of having the number.

It is like buying a lottery ticket, which offers a leasehold property as its prize. The lottery shop may be open every day to give you the hope that you may win the dream property you have craved for your life. The issue here is not only the realistic chance of you winning the lottery (and not losing it immediately to the taxman), but also the timing of winning it, if it ever happens.

Winning a property with a soon-expiring lease will be a financial burden, not a gain, if the short-term occupancy requires some expensive maintenance or renovation.

The trap that Anwar, PKR and Harapan are in

Speculated to be an announcement of some PKR-Umno collaboration, Anwar’s hyped press conference on March 16 represented the dilemma that Anwar, PKR and Pakatan Harapan are trapped in.

Had the rumoured PKR-Umno collaboration materialised, Anwar would probably face severe backlash from angry Harapan voters. Voters who queued under the hot sun or rain or even travelled home from overseas to vote out Najib Abdul Razak and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi would not take it lightly to see them as Anwar’s strategic partners.

In the worst scenario, some Harapan parliamentarians may even announce their disassociation from Anwar, like how Ahmad Mazlan and Nazri Aziz did to Muhyiddin Yassin. And what power does Anwar have to discipline them? None.

Of course, Umno was not ready to come out of the closet for Anwar. So, what’s the news to call for the press conference? Other than his initial talk with Umno that everyone has known, he could only repeat the claim that Muhyiddin has lost his majority.

Some Harapan supporters are angry with Anwar because he could not deliver the “strong, formidable and convincing” number he repeatedly claims to have.

For me, Anwar’s problem is not his ability to deliver such promise, but his insistence to tie the value of his leadership with the countercoup.

More than his lifelong craving to be prime minister, I believe Anwar’s strategic misstep is his failure to communicate to Harapan leaders and bases two cruel realities and abandon two flawed justifications for Harapan’s obsession in countercoup.

Two cruel realities before Harapan

The first cruel reality is that there can only be a negative majority against Muhyiddin, but not a positive majority for Anwar, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Shafie Apdal or any other Harapan’s prime ministerial candidate.

Since Umno’s defection is the only condition for Muhyiddin’s ouster, why would Umno use it to benefit Anwar or anyone else?

To fend off Mahathir’s continued blockade and Shafie’s emerging challenge, Anwar promised DAP and Amanah to deliver the countercoup, which he failed in his courting of GPS in June 2020, then Umno.

By August 2020, DAP gave up on countercoup and started talking about effectively a ceasefire with Muhyiddin in exchange for fairer treatments for opposition lawmakers.

Meanwhile, perhaps pressed by Shafie’s apparent superstardom before losing the Sabah state election, Anwar started in September 2020 his “strong, formidable and convincing” number game, which eroded his credibility every time he let down the audience.

Worse, Anwar has no trump card to counter Muhyiddin’s emergency proclamation when the latter was pushed to the corner. The prime minister has successfully staged a self-coup that does not look like one, and Anwar could do nothing about it.

The second cruel reality is that Harapan will not be able to form a government on its own after GE15. Its best scenario is to win enough seats to be the senior partner in a coalition government, likely with Umno and GPS, and the second-best scenario is to be a junior partner.

If Harapan voters cannot accept this reality, their lower turnout will cause Harapan’s defeat in many marginal constituencies and relegate Harapan’s position from the senior partner in government to a junior partner, or from a junior partner in government to the opposition.

But how can idealistic Harapan voters tell themselves to support a coalition that works with Umno’s court cluster?

Countercoup gives Harapan a better chance?

To end its addiction with the unattainable number, Harapan has to first ditch two flawed justifications for the addiction.

The first justification is that Harapan would stand a better chance in GE15 as the government rather than opposition.

This apparently has a root in Harapan’s diffidence when it first won power on May 9, 2018. While excited Harapan voters believed that a new Malaysia had descended, many Harapan leaders were conscious they won only 48 percent of the votes cast.

They attributed Harapan’s victory in GE14 to two factors that would not repeat in GE15; first, Umno and PAS splitting each other's Malay votes; second, an unprecedentedly high turnout of Chinese voters.

This led to Harapan’s reluctance to fully dismantle the excessive incumbency advantages enjoyed by government parties.

Hence, Harapan’s half-baked reforms: setting up 10 parliamentary select committees but excluding 70 percent of opposition parliamentarians, and no other substantial reform to strengthen the Parliament; giving RM100,000 of constituency development fund (CDF) for opposition MPs but raising the fund for government MPs to RM3.8-RM4.3 million by 2020.

Most of all, Harapan did not commence the separation of a Public Prosecution Office from the Attorney-General’s Chambers to end selective prosecution or impunity.

While the federal inertia in these reforms might be blamed on Mahathir and Bersatu, which wants to break-up and absorb Umno, legislative reforms and equitable CDF also did not happen in Harapan-controlled states.

Now, a weak Parliament, denial of equitable CDF and selective prosecution are the convenient tools for Muhyiddin to induce Harapan lawmakers’ defection. Karma or poetic justice, if you like.

Given these undismantled incumbency advantages, countercoup remains attractive to many Harapan leaders. But they might have forgotten two catches even if Anwar finally gets his number.

First, if an intact Harapan in December 2018 could be weakened by the Umno-PAS-backed anti-Icerd protest, what is the chance of a fragile Harapan-Umno government surviving a similar communal attack led by PAS and Bersatu?

Second, if the number comes too close to GE15, a chaotic Harapan back in government may reap only voters’ wrath, not delight.

The second flawed justification is the talk of countercoup may prevent crossover of Harapan parliamentarians who just miss being in government.

This wishful-thinking claim, of course, has been disproved by Larry Sng, Steven Choong and Dr Xavier Jayakumar.

What’s next, Harapan?

Harapan’s most important question now is to decide what to do while waiting for GE15. While many people believe that it would happen this year, I cannot see why Muhyiddin wants an early election that guarantees to end his premiership if he can extend the emergency as long as possible.

No matter how long the period from now to GE15, if Harapan has no strategy to reignite voters’ passion but to wait for Umno’s defection, every day passed is a day lost.

For all Anwar’s weaknesses, I still cannot see another leader who can hold a larger number of MPs in the opposition camp than him. But I increasingly wonder if Anwar is the prisoner of his old success in 1994 that he has now replaced Mahathir to be his own worst enemy.

In 1994, Anwar was instrumental in bringing down the PBS state government. Within three weeks, 20 out of 25 PBS state assemblypersons defected. Did Anwar hope to replicate his old success in 2008 and now? Did he realise he won in 1994 because he was in the federal government and no federal opposition has ever won the defection game?

Ethical or not, gambling is irrational when one’s luck is bad or when the casino is not a fair play establishment.


WONG CHIN HUAT is an Essex-trained political scientist working on political institutions and group conflicts. Mindful of humans' self-interest motivation while pursuing a better world, he is a principled opportunist.