COMMENT | DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang wants to know who Umno’s prime minister candidate is in the upcoming (it’s coming folks) general election. I have no idea why some people think that former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak is making a political comeback. He has already been welcomed back in.

While Lim thinks that this may play well with the base, the reality is that Pakatan Harapan is in shambles, and as one of the few truth speakers in Harapan, DAP’s Perai assemblyperson P Ramasamy said recently: "It would be an uphill battle for Harapan to make a comeback to the strength and resilience it had before the 2018 general elections."

Not only Lim but a whole host of political cretins have punched on the idea that Najib is some sort of bogeyman, rather than a willing accomplice to the ethnocracy and kleptocracy which had defined the 'ketuanan' ideology for decades.

The upcoming Johor state polls will determine how strong Umno/BN is, and while the political machinery of Umno/BN is slowly chugging along formulating a strategy, Harapan political operatives have yet to realise that all politics is local.

Social media is not a good barometer of how people feel about the government of the day, especially since the swing vote is not inclined to air their views on traditional friendly opposition media.

Asking if Najib would be the Umno PM candidate would mean something if corruption was not normalised in this country. We have the influential preacher Zakir Naik, who was courted by the Harapan religious establishment, claiming that it is better to vote for a corrupt Muslim than an honest non-Muslim.

We have a history of corruption scandals under the former Harapan prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad which was whitewashed by the Harapan establishment. Even when Harapan was in power, the old corrupt grandfathers in Sabah and Sarawak were ignored because it was politically expedient to do so.

Not to mention, the religious political operatives like PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang who said that "integrity without Islam is not accepted by Allah, and a person with faith who has no integrity is still better than someone with integrity but no faith".

Needing stability

And before you blame everything on the majority Malay community, keep in mind for decades Umno/BN was ushered in democratically while the then opposition - which had more cajones than they do now - was languishing in the wilderness.

Do Harapan political strategists really think that people who vote Umno/BN especially in the recent state elections really did so because it was a vote for Najib? What about the seats Harapan and the DAP lost? Were those votes for Najib too?

Beyond the toll that this pandemic has had on people's lives, what I think people really want is some form of stability. Any kind of stability. And because Harapan seems obsessed with relitigating battles they have already won, what some folks are thinking is that Umno has learnt its lesson and perhaps the old BN way would bring some sort of relief in these uncertain times.

Lim makes superficial connections between Najib and former US president Donald Trump, touching on red-meat issues. The only thing that Najib and Trump have in common is their ability to tap into the anxieties of people who fear that any form of change will disrupt their lives.

Even this is a tenuous assertion because the reality is that Harapan not only failed to deliver what it promised but was gaslighting people into believing that nothing was their fault.

I mean everyone was saying that BN had decades to screw up the system, so Harapan needed more time. Everyone except people like Ramasamy and Sungai Pelek assemblyperson Ronnie Liu, who suddenly found themselves targets from their own coalition because they demanded the reforms that Harapan promised the people who voted for them.

Now, of course, Harapan political operatives and talking heads are saying that if Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob wants reforms, he could do them easily and that he needs to prove his sincerity when it comes to reforming the system.

Playing 'musical chairs'

Meanwhile, Najib, convicted of corruption, has been relentlessly attacking opposing power structures within Umno, positioning his faction as key players in the "musical chairs" that is the de facto system in place until we have an election, to determine which bunch of screw-ups are going to be able to form a coalition to run this country.

Because of social media, Najib gets to say his piece and rehabilitate his image as a convicted felon. Reading his social media posts, you would understand that Najib is using his insider knowledge of the way the government works to destabilise any regime, which is viewed as an impediment to his playing a role in running this country, not to mention, keeping him out of an orange or purple jumpsuit.

High-profile political operatives should be highlighting issues facing Johor voters and contextualising the upcoming Johor polls as not as a referendum on Najib but as a chance for Harapan to solve the problems of Johoreans that are affected by this pandemic.