JUNE 25 — WWMD?
What will Muhyiddin (Yassin) do?
The bases are full, the pitcher’s on steroids and apparently the English prefer cricket.
And oh yeah, Malaysian politics sucks bigtime with no end in sight.
Still, the pressing question is this government’s longevity. One year or all the way to 2023.
Introspection grows as our charming neighbours Singapore vote on July 10 — pundits to ratchet up on regional democracy and how one country leans on the other.
But truth be told, outside the Bangsar Bubble the average citizen prefers a wage not a voting slip.
From decades-long cyclical voting-in of the same people as a fait accompli, Malaysians today are forced to define what’s government, and then pick one.
So, with everything stacked, and the stakes being an all-time high, what would the prime minister do?
Muhyiddin is indeed in a bit of a pickle.
The disjointed battlefield
An inventory count.
Whether Muhyiddin has a parliamentary majority or not depends on which side of his bed the Sarawak chief minister wakes up from, or if Anwar Ibrahim has a nice thing to say about his main opponent Mahathir Mohamad — who’s been mentor to both.
It’s tempting to say if Mahathir left Muhyiddin in Johor during the 1990s or ushered Anwar to replace himself thereabouts, there’d be no issue today involving all three of them. It’s tempting to say quantum physics and time-travel are less onerous.
However, Muhyiddin is the prime minister. This is his major upside, his ace of spades to Mahathir’s two of diamonds.
PM is an abusively over-concentrated power position with near unlimited strength and can only be removed in a general election or when the office-bearer in a display of mind-numbing stupidity resigns without a back-up plan.
The power disadvantages all others — opportunistic coalition members or former Pakatan Harapan colleagues.
The office of Malaysian PM was designed and reinforced over and over for a leviathan, an absolute totalitarian even if not in name.
Plainspoken, the system’s built for an Umno president with an iron grip on subservient coalition members, presiding over a population hoping rather than demanding benevolence and careful not to upset Big Brother.
Fight or flirt
What are Muhyiddin’s prime choices?
Call for an election at the start of 2021.
Despite Pakatan’s leaders' collective toil to piss off the electorate and drown their own chances, the race is not exclusively Pakatan versus Perikatan Nasional (PN).
PN was a coming together to end Pakatan’s short reign.
And the new coalition is double layered.
Details are missing over Umno and PAS electoral co-operation, but there are serious questions of whether Bersatu can form a trio with them. This the top half, the Malay spine.
Questions remain about Muhyiddin leading the group. Only if he leads the group, he is PM-candidate. Why call for elections when either Zahid Hamidi or Hadi Awang hops ahead of Muhyiddin based on seat counts, even if Pakatan’s decimated?
Muhyiddin wants to be the coalition’s choice before an election rather than let the MP count determine which partner party gets to lead post-election.
Most ideally, he’d welcome a process to merge Umno and Bersatu with him as leader. [N1] Unfortunately, Umno won’t countenance this as they can’t see themselves as Bersatu’s inferior, because allowing Muhyiddin to lead would mean that.
How about PN’s supporting cast — or minority tent?
GPS is happy to be an autonomous but reliable supporter, and MCA and MIC just want to maintain their political oxygen supply. They’ll go with any version of Umno-PAS-Bersatu Malay-first platform as long as their respective state or race issues are prioritised.
The lower layer looks at the situation strategically.
The volatile Malay leadership tussle inside PN is what keeps Muhyiddin up at nights.
Which is why a snap election is not the preferred path for now.
However, talks about one does Muhyiddin good. He distracts his allies with election talk and forces them to prepare for it. He can keep both Umno and PAS guessing and this buys time.
The other choice is a painful and laborious wait out as PM till his term expires.
Which possibly occurs in three years?
Acceptance of Muhyiddin as natural leader. There were several Mahathir administration (1981-2003) periods when the PM was under attack from inside and outside.
Staying the course was the only advice to follow. Muhyiddin can aim for that. Use time to let Malaysians get used to him on top, even if he lacks a strong party vehicle.
To use the power of incumbency.
At the same time, he can build rapport with Cabinet members and hope the cult of personality will draw them to him as a charismatic leader over their baggage-saddled parties.
Headhunt patriots from all the parties and draw them out to serve Malaysia through a Muhyiddin administration.
Maybe political parties are so twentieth century and the future is about movements like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Occupy Wall Street.
Muhyiddin the leader who transcends petty party politics to lead an ailing nation.
The ruptures inside Pakatan escalate — not to mention people age too in three years — and turns them into relics. Which offers new threads. Disillusioned leaders head out to options like Bersatu in the years to come.
Muhyiddin becomes a symbol of familiarity but with strengths Pakatan floaters can look up to.
So, the PM can use the three years to up his public image, pinch talent inside his Cabinet and sweep up the disenchantment in the Pakatan universe, and head into an election three years later when the country is recovering from economic devastation.
However, for the three years Muhyiddin ends up handing out pound after pound of flesh to partners. The price of a tender majority involving many parties and solo MPs.
This is already true with the spate of GLC appointments and appeasements to partners.
They’ll do scorned lover scenes over and over, intimate through intermediaries or at times just outright ask. The prime minister must entertain or deflect when possible without incurring persistent partner wrath.
This might get too bothersome. But is it as annoying as not to be prime minister? After all, there’s a whole prime minister’s department and billions of funding to serve the political needs of the PM and it can work for Muhyiddin as long as he is the person they report to.
So, the choices are stark and binary.
Admit to an untenable majority and brave a snap election with high likelihood of losing the PM position, or soldier on in a principles-free limbo while feeding the beasts till better days arrive.
It seems this PM will go with option two. If the choice is entirely up to him.
[N1] The last big merger in 2004 involving Parti Rakyat Malaysia and Keadilan, PRM’s Syed Husin Ali demoted himself to deputy and served under Wan Azizah in the reformatted PKR. It was no brainer, they had one parliamentary seat between them.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
