A Dr M video to tug at the heartstrings
COMMENT | A picture is worth a thousand words, goes the proverbial saying. An iconic political image may be worth much more, in terms of the shifts it may cause in voters' preferences.
Will the video, now trending on the net, of a lachrymose Dr Mahathir Mohamad lamenting the way things are and why he has to do what he is doing to an inquiring little girl do for the Pakatan Harapan cause in 2018 what a similarly heart-tugging image of Tunku Abdul Rahman did for the opposition's banner at a momentous time in 1988?
Would both images come to be seen to have caused decisive shifts at the ballot box?
Newspaper photographs of a teary Tunku Abdul Rahman, sitting in a wheelchair and speaking to a large crowd at a rally in Johor Bahru in August 1988, had a tremendous effect on the vote in the poll in the Johor capital three decades ago.
The poignant image of Malaysia's then retired first prime minister weeping over the state of national affairs helped independent candidate Shahrir Samad win comfortably the election for the parliamentary seat of Johor Bahru against an Umno candidate.
Incumbent Shahrir, who was then Umno MP for Johor Bahru, had resigned his seat to force the by-election after accepting a challenge from an Umno flunkey.
Shahrir was then a prominent member of the opposition to Mahathir within Umno.
The by-election was regarded as a bellwether of opposition to Mahathir, not only within Umno but also the country.
The poll came in the slipstream of two pivotal events: one in April 1987 when Mahathir narrowly beat back a challenge for the Umno presidency by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and the other was the sacking and impeachment of the country's top judge, Salleh Abas, in May 1988.
The by-election was held in the bitter aftermath of both interconnected events, Lord President Salleh's sacking ostensibly having to do with the supposed displeasure he caused the king through a letter he wrote him over what came to regarded as a trifling matter.
But discernible in the background to Salleh's sacking was the whine of a bigger axe being ground: Salleh had called the full complement of nine judges of the supreme court to hear the appeal of a High Court decision to declare Umno illegal on grounds of the participation in the Umno polls of April 1987 of 13 illegal branches.
It was a momentous case, for if the appeal was rejected, Umno would have had to hold a re-election, with the close result of the first enactment of the poll in April 1987, issuing in Mahathir's razor-thin victory, in danger of reversal.
Thus much rode on the outcome of the appeal. Salleh's sacking and eventual impeachment came to be regarded as collateral damage in the whole saga of the 13 allegedly illegal branches' participation in the...
COMMENT | A picture is worth a thousand words, goes the proverbial saying. An iconic political image may be worth much more, in terms of the shifts it may cause in voters' preferences.
Will the video, now trending on the net, of a lachrymose Dr Mahathir Mohamad lamenting the way things are and why he has to do what he is doing to an inquiring little girl do for the Pakatan Harapan cause in 2018 what a similarly heart-tugging image of Tunku Abdul Rahman did for the opposition's banner at a momentous time in 1988?
Would both images come to be seen to have caused decisive shifts at the ballot box?
Newspaper photographs of a teary Tunku Abdul Rahman, sitting in a wheelchair and speaking to a large crowd at a rally in Johor Bahru in August 1988, had a tremendous effect on the vote in the poll in the Johor capital three decades ago.
The poignant image of Malaysia's then retired first prime minister weeping over the state of national affairs helped independent candidate Shahrir Samad win comfortably the election for the parliamentary seat of Johor Bahru against an Umno candidate.
Incumbent Shahrir, who was then Umno MP for Johor Bahru, had resigned his seat to force the by-election after accepting a challenge from an Umno flunkey.
Shahrir was then a prominent member of the opposition to Mahathir within Umno.
The by-election was regarded as a bellwether of opposition to Mahathir, not only within Umno but also the country.
The poll came in the slipstream of two pivotal events: one in April 1987 when Mahathir narrowly beat back a challenge for the Umno presidency by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and the other was the sacking and impeachment of the country's top judge, Salleh Abas, in May 1988.
The by-election was held in the bitter aftermath of both interconnected events, Lord President Salleh's sacking ostensibly having to do with the supposed displeasure he caused the king through a letter he wrote him over what came to regarded as a trifling matter.
But discernible in the background to Salleh's sacking was the whine of a bigger axe being ground: Salleh had called the full complement of nine judges of the supreme court to hear the appeal of a High Court decision to declare Umno illegal on grounds of the participation in the Umno polls of April 1987 of 13 illegal branches.
It was a momentous case, for if the appeal was rejected, Umno would have had to hold a re-election, with the close result of the first enactment of the poll in April 1987, issuing in Mahathir's razor-thin victory, in danger of reversal.
Thus much rode on the outcome of the appeal. Salleh's sacking and eventual impeachment came to be regarded as collateral damage in the whole saga of the 13 allegedly illegal branches' participation in the poll.
Umno-BN depredations
Thus when an aged and ailing Tunku cried out to the Johor Bahru crowd, “Even the Lord President is not safe. How can I keep quiet when all this is happening?”; his tearful appeal struck a responsive chord in the crowd and even the nation.
People must have seen the exertion endured by the Tunku in lending his presence to Shahrir's campaign as a signal that all was not well in the country; voters in Johor Bahru proceeded to register their reaction in an endorsement of Shahrir.
Shahrir's victory, however, did not lead to regime change: Mahathir proved far too guileful a politician – and, in crucial difference, far too striving a player – in bamboozling the forces arrayed against him.
He will deploy every device, employ every means – ones in and out of the handbook of political stratagem and manoeuvre – to achieve his ends and outwit opposition to him.
Wasn't it the German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe who observed that salvation is for those who never cease to strive?
The little girl in the video needn't have asked why the nonagenarian Mahathir was still working: the man is destined to keep at it, whatever his circumstance.
The video of Mahathir talking to the girl displays the cleverness and striving that have characterised his career.
Those traits are aided and abetted by an amoral existentialist credo that is prepared to declare something as false today which he the day before had affirmed as truth.
In a sense, the opposition is fortunate to have a leader of his cleverness and striving to lead the fight against Umno-BN depredations, but they must regard that gift with a caveat.
When the mortality that Mahathir alluded to in the video arrives, the opposition must bury the bad he has done, contrary to Shakespeare's saying, with his bones and allow the good – his skill and striving – to be live on in emulation.
That way they will get the best out of him, after having lived under and suffered his worst before allowing him - if GE14 yields the best result for them - to salvage the country from its nadir.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
