COMMENT | Who knows if Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin can survive these political plays by his opponents within the Malay political establishment? Umno may be on a brink of a purge, PAS is clutching its pearls and Pakatan Harapan, well, Harapan is grappling with the reality that nobody wants to go out on a date with it.

This latest sandiwara of a September confidence vote is just to buy the current prime minister a little more time so he can corral the required numbers from Umno to bolster his failed regime. The fact that the once-mighty Umno is so weak that it cannot oust the current prime minister is demonstrative of how much pressure there is on the gravy train.

Muhyiddin will do everything in his power, aided by various political operatives, to delay proving his majority until he has done enough to entice more of these craven Umno types to rally to his banner. He really does not care what Harapan demands because he knows his opponents will not do the strategic thing and team up with Harapan.

Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has said that even if Umno sits on the hot seat, as soon as this pandemic is under control, there will be elections. Well, that's pretty vague coming from a right-wing political organisation which has decades of political malfeasance under its belt.

He also wants to maintain the structure of PN which is illogical because he lays all the blame on the prime minister and not on the PN system, which is based on the kakistrocratic values that define mainstream politics in this country. However the “ketuanan“ types have no desire to jettison the Malay government, only change the “captain” which is kind of dumb, because if the ship is compromised, then it does not matter who becomes the captain.

When we have members of Umno publicly squabbling about support for this regime, how on earth can anyone take seriously the idea that replacing Muhyiddin with this bunch of charlatans would mean a new direction in this war against the pandemic?

The prime minister claims that he is being pressured by certain individuals to interfere in court cases, which is a crime but yet he does not share the names of these individuals. Meanwhile, Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has publicly claimed that the charges against him are politically motivated. So, what we have here is a government that nobody can trust but yet seeks to take the high moral ground.

Columnist Nathaniel Tan tried to offer solutions out of this mess with his piece about how to break the political stalemate. The problem here is that nobody thinks that breaking the political stalemate is a national security issue. This would require putting the country above the party.

Sacred cows?

Of course, the only way out of this political mess is an election. We cannot have that at the moment, so the only viable alternative is some sort of unity government. 

You can define unity government any way you like, but of course, this is not an option, because the Malay uber alles crowd has made it clear that they have no reason to work with the DAP and anyone who supports them, even if it meant providing stability amidst this pandemic that is claiming hundreds of lives daily.

And this should tell us something about the Malay political establishment. Until we have an election, some sort of bipartisan mechanism could be worked out to lead this country but the fact that this idea is not even entertained by the Malay political establishment should remind us that these cretins do not give a damn about anything beyond their political survival.

These people are shameless. Because they have been stamped with the imprimatur of the old maverick, they believe their hubris trumps any kind of democratic norms that they have no problem using when it suits their advantage.

After all, whoever replaces the current prime minister - and Umno seems to think that it is its God-given right to rule, not lead, but to rule this country - will face the same kind of political machinations that Muhyiddin faces now.

Indeed, it would be worse because not only is the ship compromised, we would have political operatives who have placed their political interests above the response to this pandemic and they would view anyone in the hot seat as compromised and willing to do anything to stay in power. Political instability will be the defining characteristic of any government once Muhyiddin is ejected until there is an election. So, there is that to look forward to.

Remember when Zahid said democracy is dead in Malaysia because the PN killed it? Zahid got it wrong here. PN may have landed the killing blow, but democracy has been assaulted in this country for decades under the long Umno watch.

Having said that, the best thing about the Sheraton betrayal is that it has finally exposed the farcical nature of Malay privilege. In reality, all those sacred cows are sacrificial ones, and the only people in this country who are disrespectful to something like the royal institution are those who weaponised race and claimed to defend it.

What this Malay uber alles government has demonstrated is that all those sacred cows – race, religion and royalty – are not so sacred after all. "Derhaka'' is only for those Malays not part of the establishment and, of course, the non-Malay political operatives who dissent.