Nurul Izzah’s needlessly tardy 10-year wait

Nurul Izzah’s needlessly tardy 10-year wait



From Terence Netto


Nurul Izzah Anwar envisages that Pakatan Harapan will need two election cycles or a period of 10 years to find conditions that will enable its return to power.

Right now, recent victories in state polls in Melaka and Johor semaphore the message that BN are sliding back to the top – “sliding” because even when they had a thumping win in Melaka and an impressive one in Johor, BN are not the monarch of all it surveys in both states.

Internal ructions in Melaka Umno and palace countermands in Johor suggest that dominant victories at the polls do not translate into smooth sailing to the levers of power.

Let’s face it, internal dissensions in Umno are what contributed to a building-up of the opposition.

Fallout from dissensions within Umno in the late 1980s spawned Semangat 46; the Dr Mahathir Mohamad vs Anwar Ibrahim schism in Umno in 1998 engendered PKR; and the 1MDB imbroglio in Umno led to the departure of Muhyiddin Yassin and Shafie Apdal in 2015, fomenting the birth of the Bersatu and Warisan splinters.

Hence the conclusion that the pattern of fractures in Umno, leading to splinter-forming schisms, helps the opposition to supermajority-denying takings at the polls.

Umno-BN is thus weakened and the opposition can then see that they have a chance at taking Putrajaya.

Though these days there are dissenting factions in Umno, they do not threaten a schism. Umno has become adept at managing decline, surely a mark of political maturity.

Witness how it has finessed the dilemma of who is to be their poster boy in GE15.

Earlier, the party’s supreme council decided that Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob will be their poster boy.

A while ago, it looked like Umno would be bold enough to choose Najib Razak as their poster boy. His crowd-drawing cachet at the Melaka and Johor polls appeared strong enough to propel him to be the Umno-BN point man at GE15.

But recent revelations in a 1MDB-connected trial in New York and a guilty verdict against the accused banker in that case has derailed the Najib momentum.

The spoiling of his chances, combined with the indictments faced by Umno president Zahid Hamidi, leaves the choice of who is to be the Umno-BN election front man tenuously poised between Ismail and party deputy president Mohamad Hasan.

In plumping for Ismail, the Umno supreme council has, to use a golfing expression, finessed a difficult lie.

It is a move that simultaneously helps Ismail save face and dissuades Mohamad from insurgency. But it does not settle the question of who is going to be PM after GE15, an election which Umno-BN is expected to win.

This is where the opportunity lies for the opposition Pakatan Harapan to resurge after the round of defeats it suffered in recent electoral contests which bode ill for its chances at GE15.

All is not gloomy for Pakatan Harapan, however.

Given the past pattern of the Malaysian opposition doing well when Umno convulses internally, PH can look forward to waxing on the strength of Umno’s internal ructions.

Umno has too many aspirants for the top leadership. This is the legacy of Mahathir’s party-damaging lengthy tenure of 22 years during his first stint as PM, which smothered talent and encouraged mediocrities to aspire for posts that they did not have the mettle to manage.

The mediocrities relished being warlords whose support the more talented were coerced to solicit to move up the totem pole. This fanned corruption and coddled mediocrity.

This is set to continue in Umno, and will make the task of internal reform difficult to sustain. Umno’s expected return to power after GE15 is not certain to rejuvenate the party.

Meanwhile, the country withers on the vine.

With all the political and economic barometers pointing to the country nearing crisis levels, can PH allow for a 10-year interregnum before it takes Putrajaya?

PH has to conjugate a stance that is predicated on internal dissensions in Umno, and an awareness among the Malay community that continued heavy reliance on Umno is a journey to a dead end.

Just as a cancerous breast has to undergo a mastectomy, sooner or later reality wheels all into surgery for an illusion-ectomy.

A look at the current dire situation in Sri Lanka would reinforce the point.

PH cannot wait 10 years before it expects its chance to rule.

It has to hasten to restore its credibility by re-composing its agenda of reform and, while in the opposition, pressing it on the government of the day.



Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.