SEPTEMBER 15 — Those who witnessed Umno President Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi’s fiery closing speech at the closing of the recent Umno General Assembly will have been split into two camps. On one side would be those who believed the posturing and chest beating, subsequently concluding that the relationship between Zahid and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has collapsed beyond repair. “The general election will be any time now”, they would say. They can no longer work together, how can the current government possibly stand?

On the other side would be those who believe that all that huffing and puffing was nothing more than the usual ‘sandiwara’. Something to rile up the base leading into the upcoming Melaka state elections. After all, this side would reason, this is not the first time Zahid has pulled a similar stunt, recalling the time he loudly declared “No Anwar, No DAP” to frenzied cheers from the Umno throngs in attendance at the time, only to do a complete 180° and embrace Anwar, DAP and PH, to form the Madani government after the 15th GE, ostensibly at the behest of the then Yang Di-pertuan Agong.

So which is it? Is the Madani government on the brink of collapse due to irreconcilable differences as Zahid will have us believe? Or is this another sequence of political theatre being staged by the ‘guru’ and ‘anak murid’ duo? 

For some time now rumours have been swirling of a “falling out between number one and number two” (monickers for the prime minister and his deputy). In Malaysian politics, this would be nothing new. Indeed most major political earthquakes in modern Malaysian political history have been borne of hostilities between a sitting prime minister and his restless deputy. Anwar Ibrahim’s Reformasi itself emerged from one such conflict. But in those instances, the conflict arose from power struggles within the same political party. Deposing the prime minister meant the deputy could ascend to power to complete the mandate won by the ruling party, or at least until the next general election is called. In the current scenario, there is no automatic ascendancy. If Anwar resigns, Zahid doesn’t rise to take his place. The Madani coalition falls apart instead. There will be dissolution of parliament and a general election, and were that to happen right now, it would be at a time when the Umno-led Barisan Nasional is nowhere near as strong or as popular as it once was so as to be assured of a decisive win and a return to power.

The absence of an unambiguous path to power for Umno/BN is precisely what makes the supposed falling out between these two men at the top so difficult to reconcile with the political theatre we have witnessed. If the relationship between number one and number two had truly deteriorated to the point of an existential rupture, there would be little reason for either man to indulge in such elaborate public displays of hostility. Real political enmity, particularly between two men as experienced and as calculating as Anwar and Zahid, tends to be considerably quieter.

If Anwar genuinely believed Zahid had become an untenable partner, his solution would seem fairly straightforward. He is the prime minister. He could simply remove Zahid from the Cabinet and allow Umno to decide whether it wished to remain in government without its president. Conversely, if Zahid genuinely believed that Anwar had become an unacceptable partner, he has an equally straightforward weapon at his disposal. Umno could withdraw from the Madani coalition, taking with it the parliamentary numbers upon which the government depends. Neither man is short of the means to bring the other to heel.

Instead, we have had speeches, counter-speeches, social media jibes, “cabar mencabar” and increasingly theatrical displays of indignation. The rhetoric has become so fiery that one is almost tempted to conclude that it is too fiery. There is something faintly implausible about two political veterans who supposedly find themselves on the brink of an irreconcilable break, behaving as though they are trying very hard to convince everyone that they are about to break up.

Indeed, the social media sparring may tell us more than the substance of the accusations themselves. A genuine rupture between a prime minister and his deputy does not require quite so much public explanation. Once the decision has been made, the consequences follow. The prime minister acts. The party withdraws. Ministers resign. Statements are issued. Numbers are counted. The arithmetic of Parliament takes over.

Instead, what we are witnessing looks suspiciously like politics being conducted for two audiences simultaneously.

For Zahid, the immediate audience is Umno’s own grassroots. After years of electoral decline and an existential struggle over its relevance, the party and Barisan Nasional has found footing again on the back of Malay angst and nostalgia for strong Malay leadership as evidenced by Umno/BN’s recent surge in the state elections of Johor and Negeri Sembilan. But Umno/BN still needs something to keep the momentum going: an enemy and a reason for the base to rally behind its leadership. Nothing does that quite as effectively as a little righteous indignation directed at Anwar and, by extension, at DAP and PH. Zahid’s speech therefore serves a useful purpose. It charges up the Umno base ahead of the Melaka state elections and reassures a restless membership that Umno has not simply become an appendage of the Madani administration.

But Anwar has an audience of his own to manage. DAP, and the wider PH constituency, have their own expectations of what partnership with Umno should mean. Nowhere is this more delicate than in the allocation of seats for the Melaka contest. Umno, understandably, will be reluctant to surrender constituencies it considers its own. DAP, equally understandably, will expect its contribution to the Madani government to translate into electoral space.

Here, Zahid’s theatrics may actually provide Anwar with useful political cover. If Umno is seen publicly asserting its independence, refusing to yield ground and indulging in a little chest beating of its own, Anwar can point to the obvious difficulties of managing the partnership. He can demonstrate to his own supporters that he is not simply handing everything to Umno. The quarrel becomes evidence of the complexity of coalition politics rather than evidence that the coalition itself is about to collapse.

This is why the apparent contradiction may actually be the point. Both men need to be seen fighting, without necessarily needing to fight. Zahid needs Umno members to believe that he is still fighting for Umno. Anwar needs his partners to believe that he is still capable of standing up to Umno. Both therefore have an incentive to maintain the appearance of friction while ensuring that the underlying political arrangement remains intact.

And this is where the sheer scale of Zahid’s closing salvo becomes revealing. It was not merely criticism. It was a performance of estrangement. One could almost hear the political machinery behind it: Look how angry we are. Look how far apart we have become. Yet if the objective were genuinely to prepare Umno for withdrawal from the Madani government, one would expect something rather more consequential than thunderous rhetoric. There would be meetings, ultimatums, resignations, parliamentary manoeuvring and, above all, a clear indication that the numbers were being assembled.

There is none of that. Instead, there is drama. And drama, in Malaysian politics, has always been a language in its own right.

The temptation, therefore, is to read Zahid’s speech as the beginning of the end of the Madani government. Perhaps it is. But there is another, and arguably more convincing, interpretation: that what we have just witnessed is not the prelude to a political divorce at all, but the elaborate choreography required to keep a rather improbable marriage going.

The guru and anak murid duo have both been around Malaysian politics long enough to know that politics is rarely conducted merely for the benefit of the person sitting across the negotiating table. It is conducted for the people watching from the gallery, the party members watching from the branches, the coalition partners watching from the Cabinet and, increasingly, the voters watching from their phones.

So perhaps we should resist the temptation to mistake noise for rupture. The Madani government may yet fall, and the relationship between Anwar and Zahid may yet genuinely fracture. But if that day comes, it is unlikely to be announced by another round of increasingly flamboyant insults on a stage or on social media.

The real break will be considerably less theatrical.

Until then, the more plausible explanation is that this latest drama is not the climax before the fall of Madani, but another carefully calibrated charade — one designed to disguise, rather than reveal, the more consequential political manoeuvrings of the two biggest mavericks in Malaysian politics.

* Datuk Wan Ahmad Shihab is a political analyst and consultant. He is also a doctoral candidate in political science.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.