COMMENT | By pointing out that the Harapan manifesto is not worth the paper it is printed on, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has signalled that Pakatan Harapan cannot be trusted with anything it says on the campaign trail. He has spat on the faces of people who voted for Harapan in the last election and demonstrated yet again that the people who voted for the “lesser of two evils” are the punchline of the joke that is mainstream Malaysian politics.

Is the Harapan manifesto worthless? Surely there must have been Harapan political operatives who did believe in the manifesto and did not just say things because they believed they could not win.

Was that really the strategy? Make a bunch of stuff up and then if victory was miraculously achieved, claim that they could not fulfil those promises? Moving forward, how can people ever trust anything Harapan officials say when it comes to policy? The Harapan manifesto is in form and substance a political blueprint for economic, social and political reform. It was supposed to be a road map, if you like, to reform a system which had been corrupted by racial, religious and feudalistic malfeasance.

When people ask for solutions to the problems facing Malaysia, it is all there in the Harapan manifesto. Those are the possible solution – I say "possible" because ideals/ideas are only achievable when they are tempered in democratic institutions and with pragmatic leadership.

This is why that straw men of the intelligentsia not providing solutions is complete nonsense because the possible solutions for what is destroying this country is provided in the manifesto.

Now some people claim that they could care less about the manifesto, which I suppose is welcomed by the Harapan political elite. But now that the old maverick has planted the final nail in the coffin of the manifesto, political operatives should not bemoan the fact that Harapan partisans are getting cynical of the new government. What the Harapan regime has demonstrated is that they have no interest in the manifesto.

When it comes to the backtracking, the political and racial rhetoric of the Harapan regime so far has been nothing but the "social contract" ramblings of a political coalition which expects its base to conform to the old order of Malaysian politics. The tragedy is that if Mahathir and the other political operatives in Harapan were attempting to realise the manifesto instead of denouncing it at every turn, the base would be galvanised instead of the apathy that is slowly setting in.

The important part in Mahathir’s latest jab at the Harapan manifesto – that document which was supposed to “save Malaysia” – is that as yet it has not drawn condemnation from political operatives from the Harapan political elite. I do not mean weaselly-worded defences of the Harapan manifesto but rather full-throttled denunciation of the prime minister’s contempt of the document.

There were many points in the document as elaborated in my columns and elsewhere that do not need a two-thirds majority to implement. Cherry-picking certain manifesto promises and attempting to characterise a lack of political will as bureaucratic or legal hurdles is mendacious.

The fact the rhetoric of the prime minister does not receive any blowback from high-ranking cabinet ministers or political movers and shakers in Harapan is indicative of how supine political operatives are towards the old maverick and his shenanigans. It is further evidence that Harapan is a neo-BN and that whatever goodwill that some partisans had towards the new government is misplaced.

'Collective' decision

A fine example of how the PM throws his political allies under the bus is when he claims that the decision to release the Institutional Reform Committee (IRC) report must be a “collective” decision. This would mean that cabinet members – if they had any cajones – would have to state their stand on the issue because in any other functional democracy, with a political party answerable to its base, political operatives have to justify their position to the people who voted for them.

Economic Affairs Minister Azmin Ali, for instance, before he embroiled in a sex scandal had no issue with the IRC findings being released. Indeed, when the IRC finding was classified as an official secret, former law minister Zaid Ibrahim wondered if the rakyat would go mad if they read the report.

What is the finance minister's stand on this issue? After all, Lim Guan Eng is on record as saying that he wants to speak the “truth” as opposed to spin when it comes to economic issues, so why hasn’t the finance minister weighed in on this issue which affects the economy and economic policy?

The reality is that most Harapan political operatives are attempting to save their behinds instead of creating a post-Mahathir foundation. If they were interested in creating such a foundation, they would not be so servile to the political machinations going on now. What they would be doing is ensuring that their political base in not disenchanted or frustrated by the political process because they would be vocal in attempting to engineer within the political bureaucracy avenues for the Harapan manifesto to gain a foothold.
This, of course, will not happen here.

Most of the Harapan base is not interested in holding their elected representatives accountable, with some going so far as to hector those who dissent with the admonishment of the return of Najib Abdul Razak rule or now, PAS/Umno rule. When Harapan backtracked on the Lynas issue, for instance, the Harapan political elite changed the narrative from saving Malaysia to pointing out that dissent against this measure was anti-science and anti-capitalists.

Which just makes it all the more sinister since Harapan government not only controls the narrative but also includes far-right elements who control the narrative of Harapan and pose a significant threat to the fast receding secular landscape of Malaysia.  Harapan political operatives should finally admit that there is no New Malaysia only a neo-BN, and get back to squabbling about who claims the crown of Putrajaya.