'Slick Muhyi' gains currency
COMMENT Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin is fast becoming Barisan Nasional’s slickest campaigner.
Not exactly the ‘Slick Willie’ or the ‘Tricky Dickie’ of American campaign lore – the nicknames, a satirical play on two of the most slippery American politicians of recent decades, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon – but close.
Admittedly, ‘Slick Muhyi’ or ‘Tricky Muhyi’ doesn’t have the same oomph as ‘Slick Willie’ or ‘Tricky Dickie’, but if Umno’s chief tub-thumper goes on the way he had done recently, comparable epithets may be dredged up and may just stick to him...
COMMENT Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin is fast becoming Barisan Nasional’s slickest campaigner.
Not exactly the ‘Slick Willie’ or the ‘Tricky Dickie’ of American campaign lore – the nicknames, a satirical play on two of the most slippery American politicians of recent decades, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon – but close.
Admittedly, ‘Slick Muhyi’ or ‘Tricky Muhyi’ doesn’t have the same oomph as ‘Slick Willie’ or ‘Tricky Dickie’, but if Umno’s chief tub-thumper goes on the way he had done recently, comparable epithets may be dredged up and may just stick to him.
After all, the acoustic props for the era of the memorable soundbite have arrived for Malaysian politics.
If it is good for catchphrases like ‘1Malaysia’, the same would obtain for resonant epithets.
Muhyiddin has shown remarkable chutzpah in the last few days to invite retribution in a game of tit-for-tat.
After being quoted as describing the government’s interfaith panel as “small fry”, the leader of the BN campaign to wrest back the Hulu Selangor parliamentary seat denied that he had made the remark when he saw that it had triggered a tempest.
Miffed by the putdown, representatives of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism reacted by declining to attend the first meeting of the panel that was scheduled last Monday.
They reconsidered their withdrawal when the DPM disavowed the slight.
The DPM was quoted to that effect in his apparent attempt to placate Islamic conservatives who are displeased that the panel would detract from Islam’s constitutional stature as the official religion of the federation.
He disowned the remark as soon as he saw that it was impolitic.
Second zinger of the week
He is not likely to do the same for his second zinger of the week - his speculation about the reason for PKR fielding Zaid Ibrahim for the Hulu Selangor seat: the former law minister has deep pockets, said Muhyiddin.
Anyone with long enough experience of Malaysian politics including a memory of Muhyiddin’s days as Johor menteri besar or his campaign for a vice-presidential slot in the Umno elections of 1993 would laugh out in scorn at this barb from the Umno deputy president.
Audacity is alive and well in Malaysian politics. It’s preferable to the pugnacity of a Tajuddin Abdul Rahman or, worse, the calumny of alleged sexual improprieties.
By comparison the DPM’s ‘low road’ is not, after all, that base. Be thankful for small mercies.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.
