Lustre of ‘being’ Anwar wearing off

Anwar Ibrahim can no longer depend on his 'charm and gift of the gab' to hide his personal failings that surfacing every time he's faced with choices.

COMMENT

Morally and ethically, Anwar Ibrahim failed himself many years ago when he chose to put his personal agenda before that of the rakyat.

But his charm and a gift of the gab have taken him to be the deputy prime minister of our country and when that failed, to become leader of the opposition.

In the interim, he rode through many of life’s conflicts that would have felled a lesser man.

He was convicted of corruption, went through two sodomy trials, made an inglorious attempt at bluffing his way into government by riding on the crest of an impossible victory at the 12th general election and generated many other distractions that were short on substance but riddled with political expediency.

All this caused Anwar and his PKR party to be reduced from the largest political entity in the opposition to now being its weakest link.

That charm and gift of the gab served him well, but it can no longer hide the personal failings that keep surfacing every time Anwar finds himself faced with choices.

Choices that could have made him the great man that everyone thinks is lurking just under that charming and confident exterior that he exudes or show him up for the man that he really is – all bluster and show, no substance, no morality and positively no ethics in his own self.

Now even that charm and gift of the gab can no longer excuse his latest folly of trying to hijack Bersih 3.0 to be his vehicle in his desperate attempt to goad (Prime Minister) Najib (Tun Razak) and the Barisan Nasional government into lashing out at the opposition so that he could again resurrect his “reformasi” days and take our country once again into chaos, conflict and harm.

Only this time our people and our nation will not allow Anwar to do as he will with the state of our nation as we have often seen him do to advance his personal agenda many times in the past.

If we look around us now, do we not see a nation polarised into racial and religious divides?

Anwar hijacked Bersih

Do we not see an opposition that is increasingly finding it difficult to accommodate a leader that understands there is no one else to lead Pakatan Rakyat but himself and yet abuses that need to serve himself and not Pakatan?

And more worrying, do we not see the leaders within Pakatan unable or unwilling to do the necessary to bring Anwar to heel because political expediency overrides all other considerations?

And why do I say all this? Because I think matters came to a head at Bersih 3.0.

I am not excusing the brutality inflicted by the police on our people. This is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for these uniformed personnel.

Give them the opportunity and they will go berserk, whacking our people left and right. The pity of it all is that Anwar gave the police the opportunity to do just that.

Anwar took it upon himself to hijack what is a popular people’s movement, with or without S Ambiga’s consent, and proceeded to make Bersih his own.

I expected more out of someone who is our prime minister-designate.

I expect the leader of Pakatan to not covertly use Bersih for his own purpose of getting political mileage locally and globally by announcing to the world that our government used the police to beat their own people senseless and spray them with nauseating tear gas and harass men, women, children, young and old at every opportunity they had.

We know what the police are capable of doing. But Anwar is partly to be blamed for provoking the former Inspector-General of Police to hit him (and this by no means absolved the IGP of any blame for what he did) but for him to put our people in the line of fire because it served his own political purpose, is simply not right.

We expect better things of Anwar. This was Bersih 3.0′s day, not Anwar’s. The people turned up in numbers to express their solidarity and sense of purpose with Bersih, NOT for Anwar.

Anwar in denial

Anwar will continue to be in denial of what he did to make Bersih 3.0 live in infamy for the things that the police did to their own people.

Anwar will continue to be in denial for his own ethical and moral lapses.

Anwar will continue to be in denial that Pakatan and PKR no longer need him as their leader because who needs a leader who no longer has the respect of his own people because he serves only his own cause, not the people?

You people have better not be in denial anymore about Anwar – not after Bersih 3.0.

He may be the pied-piper leading PKR but just look at where he is leading PKR to.

We know that there are many from PKR who are in Bersih but we must tell them that if they want to be with Bersih, then they must leave PKR out of Bersih.

And that goes for Anwar too – leave his Umno past and his PKR out of Bersih.

We can do without the duplicity and deviousness of using people for his own political agenda, especially when these people have not consented to be put into harm’s way for Anwar’s political agenda.

Things have changed in our times.

If we want answers from Najib for the abuses in the Defence Ministry (Mindef) during his time as its minister, then by the same token, we want Anwar to be upfront with us in the things that he does while being a leader of Pakatan.

Anwar ‘hanging’ himself

Anything less would be an insult to the intelligence of our people who can by now decide for themselves if the hijacking of Bersih 3.0 by Anwar for his own purpose is right or wrong.

Enough of this, Pakatan! If you continue to be in denial at the antics and deviousness of your own leader, then what do you expect the people to think?

Is Najib the lesser of the two evils when compared to Anwar?

Let me tell all you leaders of Pakatan that this is already happening. Give Anwar enough rope and he will hang himself, said Najib.

And Anwar seems to be doing that all by himself.

We now await his political demise in the very near future – if not at his own hands, then by (Lim) Kit Siang, (Abdul) Hadi (Awang), Najib or more certainly, by that of the people.

CT Ali is a reformist who believes in Pakatan Rakyat’s ideologies. He is a FMT columnist.