COMMENT | When the Pakatan Harapan grand poobah claims that BN elected representatives will not be allowed to join Bersatu en masse but instead have to go through a “vetting” process, what the hell does this even mean?

The only elected reps that could join Bersatu are Umno elected reps. This whole horse manure about vetting and standing for independents is really just a fait accompli. And this – “Not those people who’ve got a charge against them” – is really quite sinister. I mean if the state were really interested in going after the den of thieves, which is what Harapan more or less called Umno before May 9, then there really would not be anyone left standing in Umno to cross over, right? So are there any ordinary members who “just wanted to be elected representatives” in Umno?

This would mean you have to believe that there are Umno elected representatives who did not want a first class ticket on the gravy train? This would mean that you have to believe that there are elected representatives who did not partake in the gravy train which was the 1MDB scandal.

When Dr Mahathir Mohamad says that these elected representatives have to be independents first but support the government, does anyone else see how farcical this statement is? How can you be “independent” but have to support the government? Although “appealing on bent knees” is exactly the kind of Mahafiraun statement that gets a certain segment of the Malay polity worked up. This, of course, will no doubt fire a very specific extremist base, which poses far more of a danger to Malaysia than Harapan supporters think that Umno does.

Of course, attempting to legally go after all these Umno miscreants is problematic. For one it takes time. The Attorney-General’s Chambers is already deep in covering the 1MDB scandal and of course the current Umno president's scandal. Going after every elected Umno member is mendacious, considering those who left did not exactly join Harapan with clean hands. Systemic Umno corruption is just that a complicated web of personalities, familial kinship and political alliances all wrapped around the upper echelons of a bureaucracy divided into various petty fiefdoms.

We are talking about decades of malfeasance with a cast of characters that could very well include the reformers that are saving Malaysia today. Besides, Mahathir has many loyalists from the old Umno regime who were no doubt loyal to their old patron. These people no doubt helped Bersatu in many ways before May 9 and are just waiting to cross over to the new mothership. This is politics and someone like Mahathir has spent decades cultivating people who were loyal to him but publicly towed the party line.

Washing away sins

While Mahathir entertains the idea of crossovers, Lim Kit Siang is telling us that Umno is naïve to believe that it can wash its hands off the 1MDB fiasco. When Kit Siang writes something like this – “How else to square with over RM400 million of 1MDB funds disbursed to various Umno organisations and personalities?” – what else could it mean but that the whole of Umno was involved in the 1MDB fiasco and that nobody is innocent in Umno.

Of course, if you left Umno and joined Harapan before May 9, then your sins were washed away. Can anyone really make the claim that the Bersatu folks are clean of the corruption that apparently was destroying this country? Can anyone seriously make the claim that the then opposition knew that they were essentially throwing in with people who knew exactly what was going on but chose not to do anything until the old maverick discovered that Umno was not bending to his will and left to form Bersatu?

I mean, really, when our prime minister says that someone like Tok Pa (Mustapa Mohamed, photo) was afraid to speak up against Najib Abdul Razak hence his entry into Bersatu was kosher, does this make any sense to anyone?

Suddenly people are talking about how Tok Pa was one of the better Umno leaders, forgetting the fact that he was vilified (rightly so in my opinion) by Harapan for toeing the Najib line. Who else was afraid of Najib who now can be embraced into the bosom of Harapan?

Ramkarpal Singh said all there was to say about this when he reminded Harapan that it was a betrayal of the mandate given to Harapan to accept crossovers. However, the reality is that Bersatu or any other party entertaining the idea of accepting these crossovers are not really interested in the elected representatives.

What they really are interested is in the Malay majority seats these representatives bring and the base who voted for them. As one Bersatu “online activist” told me – I like her a lot because unlike other Harapan strategist she does not shovel horse manure in my direction – that the goal is to get the representative, but replace him or her as soon as possible with a “clean” candidate in the next general election.

The base will vote for the Bersatu candidate as they would have done for the Umno candidate. People crossing over does not mean they want a political career – some do – but what they want is their sins washed away. “Like that Omar (from The Wire) quote, you like so much, Thaya, the game is out there, either you play or get played,” the strategist said.

This is the reality. Umno members are going to join Harapan. Bersatu cannot allow Umno to survive, especially with the internal schisms in PKR. The big question is, how much of a fight Harapan is going to put up and will the Harapan base, enamoured by the old maverick, going to acquiesce to a BN redux?