“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”
“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,
for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man." “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
Can Harapan move on from Anwar Ibrahim? - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Malaysiakini : “Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.” - John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
COMMENT
| The problem with Pakatan Harapan’s leadership issue is that nobody is
stepping up and challenging Anwar Ibrahim for the top job. Folks
complain and moan about his leadership, but nobody wants to step up and
offer an alternative vision. Mainstream Harapan dogma, compromises
of bromides like “reform agenda” and challenging the status quo but
everything that Harapan has demonstrated so far is politics as usual for
the opposition.
How can the base evaluate if someone is capable
of leading the opposition charge when nobody wants to put their
political careers on the line? Sure, Shafie Apdal and the two-times former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as recent as September was still advocating
for Shafie, saying "he is still one of the candidates”, and of course
the very public statements from various political operatives of the
manoeuvrings within Harapan to realise this possibility destabilised the
opposition instead of galvanising it.
Anwar has bungled so many
times that not resigning now as some claimed he would, would be just
farcical. Of course, if he resigns who would replace him? That is the
tragedy, that there are no leaders groomed to take over. There
are no political operatives who have the will and charisma to assume
leadership. There is no succession plan for PKR, and everyone is betting
on Anwar Ibrahim. This is an extremely dangerous situation to be in.
Ironically
it was Azmin Ali who was power-hungry enough and had the political
skillsets to engineer a coup that Harapan base wishes Harapan leaders
had.
Hassan Karim
Pasir
Gudang MP Hassan Karim said that Harapan needs consensus on leadership
and Anwar should be chosen. But this would mean that Harapan and the
base need to ignore every wrong move that Anwar made and pretend that
his leadership has benefited the opposition.
As I said in my last
piece that Shafie is right that there needs to be a change of leadership
and direction but I did not think Shafie was it. Mind you, if he
actually came out and challenged Anwar for the leadership of Harapan
instead of these weasel-worded attacks then a review is in order and the
base should give Shafie a fair hearing. Keep in mind what the old maverick said during a campaign stump during the last Sabah elections that a vote for Shafie was a vote for him. Oh, dear.
Meanwhile, anyone who attempts to deviate from Anwar dogma and attempts to criticise the PKR leadership is publicly excoriated. This,
of course, is extremely funny because when Azmin was making all those
moves that eventually brought down the Harapan government, Anwar and his
coterie did nothing but bury their heads in the sand and told the base
that all of this was a figment of press imagination. To be fair to
Anwar - and I am loath to be “fair” when it comes to politicians -
Harapan has never fully committed to Anwar becoming the next prime
minister.
It was excruciating seeing how many political
operatives were bending the knee to the old maverick while chastising
Anwar for wanting a timetable for a hand over of power. During the
old mavericks brief reign, Anwar was made to look like the one who
could not play well with others, all the while because of his ineptitude
with dealing with Azmin, the Harapan house of cards came crashing down.
Rafizi Ramli
Rafizi Ramli breaking his silence and
warning of scoundrels surrounding Anwar is a good political narrative
but it also points to the fact that if Anwar is so weak-willed as to be
easily influenced by scoundrels, how on earth is he going to stand up
against the mainstream Malay political establishment?
Anwar has
never known who his friends and allies were, and this is extremely
dangerous for political operative manoeuvring in a political terrain
dominated by race and religion. Running to the palace, not
telling his allies what his plans were and destroying the credibility of
his partners are making the job easier for Perikatan Nasional, Umno and
PAS. How can someone like this lead Harapan?
Mahathir when he was in power bent the establishment to his will. He knew when to use the carrot and when to wield the stick. All
Anwar can come up with is, “don’t spook the Malays”. Even now when he
attempts to spin the budget fiasco as some sort of victory nobody
believes it.
Yes, PN is weak but the problem is that Harapan is
weaker and mostly because of the strategies on Anwar. The fact that
there are those in Harapan who still want to return to Mahathir should
tell you how screwed up all of this is.
If only Anwar had kept his
mouth shut, not attempted his various farcical counter-coups,
strengthened his power base within the opposition while opposing the
machinations political and social of the PN regime, his loss in the
budget vote could have been spun as a loss for a government with only a
three-vote “majority”.
The fact that Anwar can claim that some MPs
voiced opposition to the budget in private but still voted for it, is
demonstrative of his lack of political skills not to mention basic
common sense. Politicians will say anything in private, especially when
they are trying to manipulate the leader of the opposition for their
benefit.
While Anwar claims that political operatives were
hesitant to vote against the budget because PN state erroneously linked
the budget to the functioning of the civil service and payment of
salaries, the same could be said of him and his waffling at various
stages of voting for the budget.
Anwar is projecting when he
talks like this and it is obvious to anyone who has followed this
fiasco, that it is Anwar who has failed in the leadership test. Anwar’s
loyalists tell me, that now that this budget issue is over, Anwar can
fully turn his attention to the next general election. He can finally be
free of all “these temptations” to dethrone the PN government and
commit to building and rebranding the coalition.
The fact that
they can say this is indicative of what they actually thought of those
stratagems that Anwar employed to the lead up the budget reading. Harapan
needs to be united under strong decisive leadership. The tragedy is
that nobody is stepping up to the plate. It is not that PKR needs to be
honest about Anwar, it is that Harapan needs to decide what kind of
coalition it is and if Anwar still is the only person who can lead it?