A slow changing of the guard

comment Sept 16, Malaysia Day, has come and gone and while the long-promised Pakatan Rakyat-led federal government hasn’t taken office before the day was out, many observers are in unanimity that the long, arduous process of ousting the ruling Barisan Nasional has begun “like a revolution in slow motion”.

Yesterday has been a day of high drama and tense moments, not the non-event as Umno leaders had been predicting for several weeks. The consensus is that there was “method in the madness”. “Anwar wants the change to sink in slowly into Abdullah and Umno. He must be enjoying every moment of this,” said a long-term foreign observer of the Malaysian scene.

“The die has been cast. Umno may be in a state of denial for now but they will soon run out of options and credibility. They can’t continue to belittle the opposition and bravely laugh off any idea of a changing of the guards as simply unthinkable.”

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim announced that he has well in excess of 31 defector MPs – unofficially the figure is 33 - with him and “more will be joining later”. Analysts read the “more” as those who will quit the BN but not join Pakatan.

These are blocs who have apparently agreed to throw their support behind Pakatan’s efforts to form the federal government within the next 10 days or so.

Speculation is rife that Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s PPB – “I will support whoever is in KL” - and Sapp (Sabah Progressive Party) are among these blocs.

Among the 31 are a sizeable number of MPs from the Malay-majority states and BN component parties, goes the whispers along the political grapevine but no one is telling. Of the 222 seats in Parliament, the opposition has 82 including one independent. BN has the rest including one seat – Pensiangan - declared vacant last Monday by a Election Court in Kota Kinabalu.

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang revealed as much when he described Sapp as part of the Pakatan-Plus team. Lim made the remarks in Kota Kinabalu on Malaysia Day on the sidelines of a party-organised public forum, ‘Malaysia Towards a New Era’. Sapp chief Yong Teck Lee was one of the four guest speakers and was seen in a jovial mood hobnobbing with opposition leaders including Sabah PKR chief Jeffrey Gimpoi Kitingan.

“Malaysian Borneo doesn’t want to jump from the frying pan (BN) into the fire (Pakatan),” is the theme that former Sabah CM Harris Salleh has been promoting in Kota Kinabalu. Harris has bitter memories of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s infamous pledge in 1985 to “swim or sink” with his Berjaya government. Forty-day-old PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah), led by the then young and handsome Joseph Pairin Kitingan, humiliated the mighty Berjaya, reducing it to three seats in the state assembly.

Many are puzzled by Anwar’s attempts to meet with beleaguered Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and convince him to step aside after laying out the “evidence” – signatures attesting a petition to the King, sworn affidavits, statutory declarations and other legal documentation.

“Abdullah is not going to just roll over and play dead,” said a former Umno secretary in Bukit Bintang.

“He has already closed the option of a no-confidence motion in Parliament. He has nothing to gain by meeting Anwar and possibly everything to lose. So he will hang on unless the opposition finds a way to call his bluff and force him out. He’s digging in.”

Abdullah himself, after promising to consider a meeting, has now ruled out meeting Anwar on the grounds that the opposition leader “might pull some new stunts”. “If he has the numbers as he claims, why doesn’t he make it public and let everybody see,” asked Abdullah defensively of reporters on Sept 16. “I think it’s just empty talk. The BN government is a strong government and will not fall. The mid-2010 power transition plan is on track.”

As yet, no one is telling the emperor that he has no clothes. There is widespread wishful thinking and living on hope in the corridors-of-power. Or will Nero continue to play on the harp while Rome burns?

Where is the list?

Many have questioned why Anwar doesn’t simply make public the list of more than 31 MPs who have defected to his side but this is easier said than done. Earlier, at a Kelana Jaya rally on the eve of Sept 16, Anwar himself had promised to make public the list of crossovers but had second thoughts when party leaders reminded him that “things could become awry if the Special Branch get their hands on the list”. There have been precedents before where the police, infiltrated by diehard card-carrying members, have acted as a branch of the ruling party.

Sabah in 1994, it is pointed out, is a case in point. After the PBS (Parti Bersatu Sabah), led by then chief minister Pairin, was returned to power for an unprecedented fourth time, albeit with a drastically reduced majority, splinter groups emerged from the party after election time as before the polls.

Known Chinese moneybags, involved in financing political party activities as a form of lucrative investment, swung into action assisted by Special Branch officers who kept barging into homes to reverse the election results. The governor himself, at the instigation of Mahathir, refused to agree to fresh elections. The result was that the PBS government fell after a month in office and lost the tataba, the magical KadazanDusunMurut wand of power.

They were pushed into the political wilderness for a long stretch before being allowed in from the cold as a BN member. By that time, the party had been whittled down to a fraction of its original size and now plays second fiddle to an Umno almost three times its size.

Sept 16 is Umno’s karma come full circle. “They are in no position to preach to others about the morality or otherwise of crossovers and defections. They did it before and led the way,” says a veteran PBS leader.

“Anyway, the constitution allows for freedom of association, a point used by Umno before when they brought down the PBS government by engineering massive defections and the creation of splinter parties. As you sow, so shall you reap.”

The question now is how to break the impasse and move on. Rebel BN member, Sapp thinks it won’t be easy. “Don’t underestimate the BN,” said Yong. “It is not as straightforward as it seems although the BN is in disarray and doing bad things.”

Yong was realistic about the his chances and pointed out that it would not be easy to topple the BN government since they had been in power for 51 years and had the will and resources to cling on despite various internal and external threats.

People in the know think that the chances of any of the 31 to 33 defector MPs pulling out from their pact with Pakatan is a very remote possibility. “The opposition has done it very well,” says one observer. “They have proved themselves to be effective and efficient. Their state of political organisation and mobilisation is high. Umno cannot just wish the opposition away. They are here to stay.

“Even the defectors don’t know each other. Everything has been done in the utmost secrecy to prevent the BN from launching any counter-attacks and rescuing their MPs,” adds a political scientist with a foreign university which has a branch campus in Malaysia. “Otherwise, some names would have leaked out.”

Sleeper agents in Umno?

It is clear that Anwar still has considerable support – sleepers, it is said - within Umno and the BN from the days when he was with them and rose rapidly within a decade to become deputy prime minister until dismissed by Mahathir, followed by expulsion from the party, a beating in jail at the hands of the police chief himself and finally incarceration for six long years under charges which were later proved upon appeal to have been trumped up.

Abdullah is expected to be a deadender, leaving the opposition with no choice but to present their case to the king himself in the coming days. His majesty can advise Abdullah to tender his resignation and that of his cabinet and allow Anwar to form the government. If Abdullah refuses, the king can either sack him.

Abdullah’s misfortune is that the king currently on the throne is a university graduate, a first, and is no pushover. He’s his own man as witnessed in the appointment of the menteri besar in his home state of Terengganu after the March 8 general election. Abdullah had to back down and suffered a humiliating loss of face.

On the plus side, the opposition alliance has pledged to hold elections within six months to a year to secure a new mandate. This is a point which will go down well with the king and the electorate. “We need that time to introduce basic reforms and clean up the electoral rolls,” says PKR vice-president R Sivarasa.

It is unlikely that the king or the opposition would favour holding a new round of general elections in the next few weeks. Déjà vu?

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JOE FERNANDEZ is an educationist and former newspaper editor and ex-civil servant who feels compelled to put pen to paper when something doesn’t quite jell with his weltanschauung (worldview).