Lim Guan Eng

COMMENT | Lim Guan Eng’s endorsement of Rais Yatim to be the new law minister is perhaps the most cynical attempt at dethroning the Perikatan Nasional (PN) regime I have witnessed so far. And believe me, there are doozies to choose from, as Pakatan Harapan has attempted to exploit anything, or anyone, to kick PN off the Putrajaya hot seat.

Think about it. The DAP secretary-general really said that Rais is the kind of political operative that fits this description – “The nation needs leaders who are committed to upholding the law for the benefit of the people, not politicians who are interested only in protecting their perks and privileges of office.”

Now, I have to believe that Lim really does not believe that Rais fits his description of the kind of leaders this country needs, so what he said about Rais fitting the role of one of the few honest men in Putrajaya is just political theatre.

Of course, we are in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic, a war if you like, which we are losing, so I have no idea why such statements are issued. Politics is of course a cynical game, but this is just so craven, it feeds into the Malay uber alles narrative that the DAP are a bunch of sycophants willing to do or say anything to remove the PN regime.

And let us not get into the whole constitutional argument that it is not the job of the law minister to demonstrate loyalty and obedience to a “royal command”. This is exactly the kind of statement that could come back and bite Harapan, especially the DAP, on their behinds when the royal institution decides that its “orders” need to be followed when the Constitution clearly does not articulate such a position.

You know, even the average Malay partisan does not believe this, and Lim would have the Harapan faithful believe that someone like Rais would uphold the rule of law in a country where the term has lost all objective meaning.

Centre-right and far-right political operatives have been sending me emails and texts mocking Lim’s latest gaffe and sending me evidence of how the DAP had no problem ignoring royal commands and “inciting” their Malay partners to do the same in the name of political ideology and the Bangsa Malaysia kool aid.

Now here’s the thing. Malay political operatives in Harapan get to make such horse manure statements and such statements are brushed aside or overlooked because this is what mainstream Malay politics is all about. However non-Malay political operatives do not get to advocate such nonsense without being called out by the Malay uber alles crowd as evidence that the “Chinese” DAP will take advantage or create trouble for Malay-based parties to get into power.

If you are a DAP supporter who is dumb enough to think that this is some sort of grand strategy to pit the Malay uber alles crowd against each other, you were probably dumb enough to think that former DAP man Hew Kuan Yau’s “Malays screw the Malays” was a political strategy that non-Malay power brokers could benefit politically from.

This is why the DAP as a supposedly progressive, secular-leaning political party should stay away from the internal machinations of the Malay establishment. Mind you, the Malay establishment includes PKR, and of course the presumptive prime minister candidate, Anwar Ibrahim.

You know what happens when “Malays screw the Malays”? The Sheraton Move happens. We now know, according to a series of articles by DAP strategist Liew Chin Tong, that the DAP was bending over backwards to support current prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin when he was in Harapan.

We now know that while PKR was imploding behind the scenes, flunkies were telling all who would listen that the internal squabbles within PKR were just the imagination of the press. All of which points to the fact that while Rome was burning, Harapan political operatives were busy playing their political games. Why make the same mistake again?

This is not about the DAP going at it alone. Nobody is asking for the DAP to go at it alone. What the base wants, what they should want, is a party that, at the very least, attempts to conform to principles that could very well save this country, instead of pandering to political structures and all the while gaslighting its voting base.

You can and should work with imperfect allies but this does not mean engaging in dumb rhetoric or worse sub rosa alliances with factions from within the Malay establishment who have demonstrated hostility to the supposed political agendas of the DAP, and not to mention, scapegoating the non-Malay community.

By all means, if and when Parliament reconvenes, vote with other political operatives to redefine the political landscape, but what you should be doing is highlighting the struggle of the average rakyat and not resorting to failed political and moral strategies of enabling corrupt and inept operators from factions within the Malay establishment in the hopes of gaining some sort of political advantage.

If you carry on with a rakyat-centric narrative, chances are people would remember that more than your attempts to game the compromised system. The irony – for me at least, because of my very public disdain of the Bangsa Malaysia propaganda – is that what this pandemic has done, is seed the political ground to make such a concept viable.