In this Game of Thrones

I am no longer looking at the 13th General Election. I am looking at the post-GE period and the 14th General Election. And I am worrying about how the game in this Game of Thrones is going to be played in the period between the 13th and the 14th General Elections. The 13th General Election is not the end of our problems. It is only the beginning.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Many of you are still entry-level ‘politicians’. From your comments it can be seen that you are political novices, and armchair political ‘analysts’ on top of that. Many of you probably became politically active or politically conscious only in 2007 or 2008.

Many of you look at the 13th General Election on 5th May 2013 as a contest between Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional or a contest to choose the next Prime Minister -- Najib Tun Razak or Anwar Ibrahim.

You probably never even heard of the names of the various game-changers in this Game of Thrones. And, yes, this is what it is: a Game of Thrones. And the game-changers may not necessarily be those 2,000 or so candidates who are contesting the general election.

For example, Abraham Lincoln was definitely a game-changer but John Wilkes Booth was an even bigger game-changer. John F. Kennedy was yet another game-changer but Lee Harvey Oswald was an even bigger game-changer (unless the conspiracy theorists are correct).

How many of you novices know or remember names such as Daud Samad, Lorrain Esme Osman, Jalil Ibrahim, Ibrahim Fikri, Asri Muda, Rahim Bakar, Onn Jaafar, Ghazali Shafie, Hussein Ahmad, Mohamed Yaacob, Nik Hassan Abdul Rahman, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and many more? (You probably would have heard of Onn Jaafar and Tengku Razaleigh).

Who is Nik Hassan and what is so significant about him and why is he a game-changer? Nik Hassan was the Menteri Besar of Terengganu who went into conflict with the Terengganu Sultan and was eventually forced to retire and hand the ‘throne’ to Wan Mokhtar Ahmad. And Wan Mokhtar was the Menteri Besar who agreed to the 5% oil royalty for Terengganu and eventually Sabah and Sarawak too were subjected to the same terms.

Hence Nik Hassan ‘created’ Wan Mokhtar. In fact, Wan Mokhtar was Nik Hassan’s handpicked successor who eventually ‘betrayed’ the state by agreeing to the 5% royalty. Therefore, Nik Hassan was the game-changer and if he had not gone into conflict with the Sultan and was not forced to hand over the reins of the state, Tun Razak Hussein could not have twisted Terengganu’s arm to accept 5% (mainly because Nik Hassan was a fighter and if you dare challenge the Sultan then you are definitely a fighter).

Okay, many of you may disagree with me about Tengku Razaleigh. You may not think of him as a game-changer. But I do. And I think so not because I think he is Prime Minister material but because he was the man who pressured Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad into accepting Anwar Ibrahim into Umno.

Dr Mahathir did not agree to this but eventually, because of Tengku Razaleigh’s persistence, he relented. Hence, if not because of Tengku Razaleigh, Anwar would have become the President of PAS, as what Fadzil Noor had wanted, instead of the Deputy President of Umno. And, today, PKR plus Pakatan Rakyat would not exist and PAS and DAP would be two separate opposition parties of no threat to Barisan Nasional (because there would not have been any political crisis in 1998 where Anwar was ousted from Umno).

Lorrain Esme Osman was the man in the centre of the BMF controversy that implicated Tengku Razaleigh. The BMF crisis more or less messed up Tengku Razaleigh’s chances of taking over the Presidency of Umno in 1987. Many of the Umno delegates believed that Tengku Razaleigh was somehow involved in the BMF affair. And Jalil Ibrahim’s murder in Hong Kong angered enough Malays to vote against Tengku Razaleigh (although there were allegations of fraud as well).

Anyway, those are just some examples of how fate decides who becomes the game-changer and the game-changers are not necessarily those who sit on the throne but those who decide or influence who gets to sit on the throne.

The 13th General Election on 5th May 2013 is more or a less already a fait accompli or foregone conclusion. Those in the corridors of power already know who is going to form the government on 6th May 2013 and who is going to be the Prime Minister.

What we are currently seeing are the games they are playing -- a show of strength to con the voters and, hopefully, sway the last few stragglers or fence sitters. To most of us, the committed, we have already made up our minds and there is very little they can say or do to change that.

MCA, MIC and Gerakan, who collectively won 20 seats in 2008, are going to get wiped out. MCA may be down to six or seven seats with zero for MIC and Gerakan. East Malaysia, which saw 54 seats going to Barisan Nasional in 2008, may see only 35-40 seats going to the ruling party this time around.

Hence Umno needs to grab some ‘Malay’ seats from PKR and PAS if they want to remain in power. And to do this Umno has to increase the Malay popular vote from 51% in the last election to as close to 60% as it can get this time around, maybe 54-56%. If not then Umno and Barisan Nasional are doomed.

Anwar cannot form the federal government just by winning seats in the general election. Anwar can only do it if he can convince 15 to 25 Barisan Nasional (and/or independent) Members of Parliament to cross over AFTER the general election.

There are four states that are critical to whoever wants to win the general election. These states will give you the federal government and these states are Perak, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak. These four states control 106 of the 222 seats in Parliament, almost half.  Hence Barisan Nasional needs to retain these four states, and at a large majority on top of that, if they want to stay in power.

So that is Umno’s and Barisan Nasional’s 'Waterloo' -- Perak, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak.

Most of you are still focused on winning the general election or concerned about who is going to win the general election in slightly over a week’s time. That is the novice’s way of looking at things. It is actually too late to worry about that. That should have been our worry up to last year.

What we need to worry about now is post-GE. What is going to happen post-GE? In other words, how is the Game of Thrones going to be played? And how will this determine the outcome of the 14th General Election in four or five years from now?

I am no longer looking at the 13th General Election. I am looking at the post-GE period and the 14th General Election. And I am worrying about how the game in this Game of Thrones is going to be played in the period between the 13th and the 14th General Elections. The 13th General Election is not the end of our problems. It is only the beginning.

Remember one thing: Malaysian politics is the politics of winner takes all and loser loses all. What we need to know is not who the winners and losers are going to be on 5th May 2013 but in what way we, the voters/rakyat,are going to win or lose post-GE.

We can’t change the present. But we can change the future. And the future is the post-GE period and how this period is going to determine what happens in the 14th General Election. After all, we are not a player in this Game of Thrones. But we can certainly be the game-changer.

Remember one more thing. There is no such thing as a good government, never mind which government you choose. All governments are bad. And the longer they remain in power the worse they become (as Barisan Nasional and many other governments all over the world that have been in power for too long have proven). The only thing is how do we prevent the bad government from being bad?

That is what you and I must now concentrate on.