PKR Contenders

COMMENT | The upcoming election for the PKR deputy president post will determine Pakatan Harapan’s trajectory either into oblivion or as a stable opposition if the deputy president can exert any influence in the party.

The two dominant narratives, the “big tent” or “no short cuts” are the kind of false choices that political operatives offer when the reality is that both choices are in fact a necessity of coalition politics. The problem is that the leadership of Harapan has ruined these choices but more importantly, we are talking about the ketuanan system.

Any political party has to stand on its own before it can make alliances with other parties. Not only does the political party have to have ideological bedrock on which it furthers its agendas, it also has to agree on common ground issues when it makes alliances, which each party, in turn, has to sell to their respective bases in case of a political hook up.

Even the new DAP secretary-general, Anthony Loke, acknowledged that unheard-of political hookups could be a reality but the important caveat is that it happens after an election and not working with political operatives who have plundered public coffers.

Diplomacy is needed when making alliances and, more importantly, rationalising such political alliances with the base. The problem here is that Harapan, and I say Harapan because all its component parties have been complicit in the failed stratagems of Anwar Ibrahim has made a mockery of the big tent approach.

Also, a big tent in political speak merely means differing political stances within the same ideological framework coalescing around common ground issues within the same political party.

It is not some sort of grand political cartel where nobody has anything in common – although in the Malaysian context I do not know how true this is – attempting to overthrow an established political coalition to which everyone belonged at one time or another with the exception of the DAP, which merely profited from political breakups.

Of course, I am talking about functional if flawed democracies. In Malaysia what we have, we got. I won’t bother going into the failures of Harapan but look at who they are up against – which depends on who Anwar is not talking to I suppose – various ethno and religious cabals who have no interests in anything else but ensuring that the establishment continues in a haze of religious and economic corruption under a feudal system of patronage.

I keep asking Harapan political operatives who believe that this big tent approach is the only way into Putrajaya what they hope to achieve when they get there. What I get, beyond stopping the court cluster from gaining power again, are vague “people-centric” reforms that everyone can agree with, which means pushing entitlement programmes in lieu of any controversial reforms which could actually save this country.

This time it will be different, they say. This time, there will be no former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The problem is that even though there will be no Mahathir, there will be constant infighting between various political cabals and their minions in the vast bureaucracy which for the average rakyat would be an extended turf war which would paralyse the system.

Furthermore, I am sceptical of the narrative that this political landscape is as permanent as some people think. The longer Umno/BN continues to win elections albeit weakly, the more entrenched the perception that Umno/BN is coming back and that the hegemon needs nobody else to offer stability and prosperity.

All this Malay uber alles government has demonstrated is that they cannot lead the country, which is why Umno propaganda is about returning to some sort of equilibrium with the non-Malay polity that abandoned BN.

Keep in mind that Umno/BN enjoyed decades of popular support before descending into the kind of kleptocratic stupor only possible when a coalition enjoys unbridled support for decades. So, in a sense, the big tent is actually a grouping of political parties on life support, excluding the DAP, which could never go anywhere without the partnership of the Malay political establishment.

So a shortcut to Putrajaya may not be all it is cracked up to be and because of Anwar’s failed attempts at garnering the support of the Malay political establishment, PKR is in the state it is in.

Observe how a faction of the Malay political establishment in the form of Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin is claiming he is being wooed by other factions because a majority do not support kleptocracy.

Yes, they also do not support meritocracy, an accountable state security apparatus and a level economic playing field that merely means that the split vote is not an ideological one but rather about political personalities.  When the personalities fade away so will the split vote.

It is because PKR is on political, life support, the only way to mitigate the damage done, is adopt a no shortcut attitude if PKR is to remain a credible alternative to Umno/BN or Umno/PN.

Indeed, I am sceptical if the no-shortcutters could actually get PKR off life support. The reality is that the numerous attempts at the big tent have only made Harapan weaker and PKR in particular the punching bag for Harapan supporters.

All of this means bupkis of course. The person who should determine the trajectory of PKR is instead allowing his lieutenants to battle it out without even telling the base which strategy he favours. It is as if clinching the deputy president post suddenly means a new strategy would be adopted.