Our "Great Leader"

COMMENT | Amanah strategic director Dzulkefly Ahmad’s public statement that Harapan was willing to offer former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad a mentor minister or senior minister role in the next government if the old maverick wanted to collaborate with Pakatan Harapan in the next polls is the kind of strategy which has landed Harapan in the mess it is in. 

First off, the idea of any kind of mentor or senior minister role is the kind of “Asian values” bunkum propagated by aged paternalistic political operatives around Asia who are intellectually and morally bankrupt, who would rather rely on personality politics than substantive policies to further their political agendas.

It is right up there with “guided” democracies which is a shorthand for fascist-leaning racialists and religionists who would rather attempt a pantomime of democracy instead of the hard work of building independent democratic institutions and credible elections.

In 2020, Mahathir, when presented with this option, made his stance clear on the issue. “No, I will not accept it,” he said in an interview with Sin Chew Daily. 

Mahathir said that based on his experience, no one would listen to his advice. “Whenever I advise a prime minister (Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Najib Abdul Razak or Muhyiddin Yassin), they never take my advice,” he had said. 

In other words, Mahathir would not accept this role (in 2020) because he believed nobody would listen to him, least of all the prime minister of the country and secondly, Mahathir correctly points out that a prime minister should create a legacy of his own and not rely on anyone. 

This last part is, of course, problematic and indicative of the strongman nonsense which finds favour in various voting demographics all over the world.

I have no idea why Harapan still chooses to placate the old maverick. It is pointless listing down the damaging behaviour and strategies he employed to destabilise Harapan when he was in power the second time around. 

And I am not even referring to the political moves he made which led to the Sheraton Move. I am talking about the way in which he destabilised Harapan by mocking the reform agenda and policy initiatives which Harapan wanted to move on but were stymied by the old maverick.

And let us be honest here. Harapan was bending over backwards to sustain political narratives that the old maverick was peddling. In public statements, Mahathir basically castrated former finance minister Lim Guan Eng by claiming that he really did not have much power and that everything had to go through him.

Mahathir let the cat out of the bag when he commented on giving more to the Malay community at the expense of the Chinese community - "We still have to give them, but what we gave to them was very small (compared to what the Malays got). But we could not say it then, because then the Chinese would be angry.” 

Now it is easy to blame Mahathir for all of this, but the reality is that Harapan political operatives were enabling the old maverick and his coterie of Umno rejects and when the manure hit the fan, they attempted to gaslight the Harapan base that any failure was because of the deep state instead of the fact that Harapan did not have the political will to go against the old maverick.

And let us not even get into the whole Anwar Ibrahim/Mahathir drama. Why would Harapan want to subject the public to the animus these two men have towards each other. Mahathir is on record as saying that Anwar is not suitable to be prime minister for various ridiculous and I would argue bigoted reasons. 

So what Harapan would set up, is a senior minister or mentor minister who thinks that the prime minister is not qualified for the role.

Could you imagine the kind of political drama we would witness if Harapan does manage to take Putrajaya? Every day we would be fed a steady diet of the political machinations of these two old men, squabbling behind the scenes while Harapan apparatchiks would be telling everyone that nothing is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The animosity between these two leaders is public knowledge because Mahathir, from his public statements, has made it very clear what he thinks of Anwar, what he thought of Harapan’s manifesto, what he thought of cronyism, and what he thought of reforming the system.

Meanwhile, Anwar has taken all these insults, skulduggery and political malfeasance thrown his way in his stride, while his proxies wage a political war on his behest, which tore down a legitimately elected - sans popular vote - government.

Survey after survey has demonstrated that young people believe that their votes do not matter. Both coalitions have made it their agendas to prove young people right. 

Young people have so much political power in this country but as long as their apathy is enforced, the longer this kakistocracy remains in place.

The fact that the Harapan political elite is still forwarding this narrative only benefits the fractured Malay uber alles coalition they are up against. 

Keep in mind that the old maverick does not want the political terrain to change. He wants for everyone to still fight on this fetid political terrain because his relevancy comes from the Malay uber alles politics he nurtured for decades.