The self-delusive ‘art’ in Azhar’s praise of Muhyiddin

The self-delusive ‘art’ in Azhar’s praise of Muhyiddin



From Terence Netto

The Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, Azhar Azizan Harun, has raised the art of the volte-face a further notch.

Among prominent public figures of recent years, the turnaround executed by lawyer Azhar, from supple critic of the Umno-Barisan Nasional government to supine protector in Parliament of the engineers of the “Sheraton Move”, was one of the more unabashed U-turns in the political arena.

Azhar’s turnabout was more self-demeaning than Tunku Abdul Aziz’s summersault from elegant critic of the excesses of Umno-BN to erstwhile defender of its machinations after he had served a stint as a DAP-appointed member of the Senate.

Both Azhar and Tunku Aziz were alike in that their polished diction and education certified them as members of the upper crust, but their deportment after crossing the floor came from the nether regions of the social strata.

It was an unnerving lesson in how all that glitters is not gold.

The sobriquet ‘Art Harun’ that political circles came to attach to Azhar was a catchy play on his name. It was deserved for the reason of the subtlety of Azhar’s strictures against the government.

His about-turn from elegant critic of government to obsequious rationaliser of its moves in the Lower House conveyed the depth of the dissembling that went into his persona in its pre-Speaker phase.

The artifice has left the ranks of government critics newly awakened to the need to sort out dissemblers early. Nobody likes being duped by an elegant fraud.

Not elegance, but imprecision coloured the encomium that Azhar paid his benefactor when he launched the book “Muhyiddin Yassin: Leading a Nation in Unprecedented Crisis” in Kuala Lumpur on Friday.

Azhar described the eighth prime minister and current leader of Perikatan Nasional as an “overlooked reformist.” He lamented the paucity of credit for Muhyiddin’s achievements since making a political comeback from the time of his sacking as deputy prime minister in July 2015.

Azhar’s description of Muhyiddin as an “overlooked reformist” would be about as accurate as calling Pasir Salak MP Tajuddin Abdul Rahman an overlooked diplomat.

What reforms Muhyiddin introduced during the time he was home minister (May 2018 to February 2020) and prime minister for 17 months (March 2020 to August 2021) more nearly owed their occurrence to expedience than to intent.

Since upsetting Najib Razak to the top vice-president’s post in the Umno elections of November 1993, Muhyiddin has had his eyes firmly fixed on the prime ministerial chance.

Huge was his disappointment when newly installed prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, under pressure from the just-retired Dr Mahathir Mohamad, chose Najib as his deputy in January 2004.

A disappointed Muhyiddin exacted his revenge on the hapless Abdullah all through the months after the opposition denied Umno-BN a parliamentary supermajority in the general election of March 2008.

The result left Abdullah flailing and mortally wounded. Najib’s ascension from deputy prime minister was inevitable by April 2009, thanks in large part to Muhyiddin’s unremitting pressure on Abdullah.

When Najib succeeded Abdullah, Muhyiddin was appointed deputy prime minister. In that position, he began his campaign to be prime minister by going on end-runs around Najib’s laudable attempt to introduce political and economic reforms to an already deeply sclerotic system.

That attempt was baulked by Mahathir, using Ibrahim Ali’s Perkasa, and by Muhyiddin’s “I am Malay first” posturing.

Najib’s reforms could not gain traction in the teeth of Mahathir’s undermining effort and Muhyiddin’s subversion. The latter two kicked the can of urgent and necessitous reform of the Malaysian polity down the road, making the Malaysian disease even more difficult to cure.

Now all that ex-Umno and current Umno aspirants to be prime minister can do is to offer palliatives, not the panacea required by the country’s already fraught condition.

To call one deployer of meagre palliations an “overlooked reformer” is to strain credulity.

Azhar should be asking himself why he could not sustain his own reformist inclinations as critic and then as parliamentary referee. His turnabout adds to the national sclerosis, and his lauding of Muhyiddin makes worse the elite’s insulation from reality.



Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.