Anwar needs 20 seats, will Sabah deliver?

The only person standing between Anwar Ibrahim and the Prime Minister’s chair is Musa Aman.

COMMENT

Today, the only state which stands between Anwar Ibrahim and the Prime Minister’s chair is Sabah.

And the person who can “stop” Anwar from becoming the Prime Minister is Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman.

Anwar needs at least 20 parliamentary seats out of the 25 in Sabah for him to achieve his dream of becoming Malaysia’s seventh premier.

But Musa controls the bulk of the parliamentary seats in Sabah. In the 2008 general election, he steered the Barisan Nasional coalition to win all but one parliamentary seat and that too without calling in any central leader from the party to the campaign trail.

Anwar-led Pakatan Rakyat and its major and minor cohorts in the media have carefully indulged in systematic campaign to character assassinate Musa.

One of the easiest slurs to assassinate the character of the person is by branding him corrupt and a womaniser.

But the argument that Musa is corrupt is shallow and the opposition front is aware of this fact.

Historically, corruption in Malaysia has always been connected to both government and opposition. Both sides are equally corrupted. But they repeatedly use the corruption card for obvious reasons.

In the present day, using the same card to discredit Musa has become over-played, and if we allow such divisive politics to succeed, we can only shudder at the future of this nation.

Victorious Musa

According to a Pakatan strategist, the coalition is pulling no stops and has created an entire “stop-Musa” machinery by roping in all sorts of activists, media persons and disgruntled Umno Sabah elements.

But if Sabah BN wins a majority of the state seats and Musa is returned as chief minister, then let no doubt remain that this will be the biggest danger to Pakatan and local players Sabah Progressive Peoples Party (SAPP) and the State Reform Party (STAR).

It is to prevent this from happening that the fragmented Sabah opposition is working overtime.

Malaysia will go to the polls soon and Sabah expects to witness Musa yet again emerging victorious.

BN will take 31 seats to capture the 60-member Sabah State Legislative Assembly. But this will not be enough for the opposition. In its eyes, if the BN under Musa garners 35 seats and below, it will be “portrayed” by the opposition as a defeat for Musa.

This is why the fragmented Sabah opposition is willing to stoop to any level to ensure that the BN bags less than 35 seats.

And to this end it roped in the disgruntled Umno elements in the form of Lajim Ukin and Ibrahim Menudin and pitted them against Musa.

Selvaraja Somiah is a geologist and freelance writer. He blogs atselvarajasomiah.wordpress.com.