Politicians make strange bedfellows

Some view Mustafa Ali as a threat to Pakatan Rakyat solidarity. They view him as an Umno mole who may sway many in PAS to agree that their party go to bed with Umno in the event that Umno or Barisan Nasional does not win enough seats and DAP ends up getting the most number of seats compared to PAS and PKR.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Whoever thought that my party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LibDem) of the UK, would go to bed with the Conservative Party after saying that in the event of a hung parliament they would go to bed with the Labour Party. “Why the ‘U-turn’?” as what Malaysia Today readers are fond of saying.

This is not about doing a U-turn. After all, politics is all about U-turns. Even the most famous Prime Minister in UK history and the most famous Prime Minister in Malaysian history (meaning the Tunku) changed parties. This is about political expediency and who can offer a better deal.

What LibDem wanted was reforms, the same thing that Malaysians have been clamouring for since 1998 but did not almost see until ten years later in 2008. However, while Labour offered only electoral reforms, Conservative offered a bigger and more complete package, political reforms -- part of that package being, of course, electoral reforms.

This is not about what LibDem wants for itself or about what is good for LibDem. This is about what is good for the people and the country. And political reforms are by far better than electoral reforms.

Of course, whether they can deliver these reforms or whether they will keep to their promise is another thing altogether. Time will tell. But we must at least start off by promising first. If you won’t even promise that, then for sure you will never deliver it.

Malaysian politics is no different. Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat are both coalitions, just like the Conservative-LibDem coalition in the UK -- and many other coalitions all over the world that will not be able to form the government on their own unless they enter into a coalition because no one party won enough seats to form the government.

So Malaysians had better get used to this new political culture. All over the world very few political parties can win enough seats to form a government on its own. Governments need to be formed via coalitions. And coalition partners are political parties, most times parties that are at odds with one another. And coalition partners can and do change from one election to another.

In 1957, Umno could have never gained Independence or Merdeka for Malaya on its own. So it was forced (by the British) to go into a coalition with MCA and MIC, which they called the Alliance Party.

Just 12 years down the road and the Alliance Party (or coalition) could no longer sustain itself. So they needed to form yet another coalition called Barisan Nasional and the opposition parties were invited to join this new ruling coalition. DAP was the only party that did not join Barisan Nasional.

Umno says DAP refused to join while DAP says it was not invited. I suppose this debate would go on forever -- just like the debate about whether Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia or Singapore left Malaysia.

Nevertheless, PAS stayed in the Barisan Nasional coalition for just three years. In 1997, PAS left Barisan Nasional to join DAP in the opposition ranks.

But not everyone was happy for PAS to leave Barisan Nasional. Once such person was (or is) Mustafa Ali who was a Deputy Minister (and for less than one year on top of that). But Mustafa Ali and the rest of the ‘Umno-friendly’ PAS leaders had no choice. They were members/leaders of the party and the Cabinet post ‘belonged’ to the party. Hence if PAS left Barisan Nasional then they too had to leave, like it or not.

There are still leaders in PAS who have no objections to a ‘unity government’ with Umno or Barisan Nasional in the event that Umno or Barisan Nasional does not win enough seats to form the federal government or state governments.

If you can remember, soon after the 2008 General Election, I wrote about the secret negotiations going on between some leaders in PAS and some leaders in Umno to form unity governments in Perak and Selangor -- two states that fell to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat.

At first, and as usual, they denied this and called me a liar. Later, it was revealed that the secret negotiations did, in fact, take place. However, not all the PAS leaders were excited about going to bed with Umno. Only a few of the ‘Umno-friendly’ PAS leaders wanted it to happen. Those such as Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Aziz Nik Mat, who has never forgotten and forgiven Umno’s ‘betrayal’ of 1977, would not go to bed with Umno ever again even if their political life depended on it.

Hence, without a clear consensus, the secret negotiations failed. And later some of the PAS leaders came out to confess that the secret negotiations did take place. They also confirmed that one of the carrots that Umno dangled in front of them was that PAS would become the Menteris Besar of both Perak and Selangor.

And hence, also, Raja Petra Kamarudin did not lie after all, as they had originally alleged.

And the man who would become the Menteri Besar of Selangor would be Hasan Ali, one of those who together with Nasharudin Mat Isa were involved in the secret negotiations -- and who have both since left PAS (or got kicked out) and are now ‘independent cum Umno-friendly’ ex-PAS leaders.

In fact, as far back as 1999, Hasan Ali already indicated that he wanted to become the Menteri Besar of Selangor and this was the reason why he and Azmin Ali could not see eye-to-eye -- because Azmin too wanted to become the Menteri Besar of Selangor. (Now you know why Khalid Ibrahim got the job instead -- to keep both these sons of Ali from tearing into each other).

You will have noticed that many of those PAS leaders involved in the unity government secret negotiations have since drifted away from PAS. But there is one man still in PAS and who is considered very influential and who could play an important role in bringing PAS and Umno together in the event Umno or Barisan Nasional does not win enough seats to form the government on 5th May 2013.

And this man is Mustafa Ali. And Mustafa Ali does not want to state in very clear terms that in the event Pakatan Rakyat gets to form the federal government then Anwar Ibrahim is without a doubt going to be the Prime Minister.

Some view Mustafa Ali as a threat to Pakatan Rakyat solidarity. They view him as an Umno mole who may sway many in PAS to agree that their party go to bed with Umno in the event that Umno or Barisan Nasional does not win enough seats and DAP ends up getting the most number of seats compared to PAS and PKR.

You must remember, most of the top PAS leaders are ulama’ (religious scholars). Mustafa Ali is not and that is why they call him Cikgu Pah and not Ustaz Pah. Mustafa Ali is more a Malay nationalist than an Islamist. Hence Mustafa Ali would have no problems if PAS went to bed with Umno, a Malay nationalist party.

So who killed off Mustafa Ali (and I can only assume that with the latest Mustafa Ali sex video going viral on the internet we can consider him dead)? Is it Umno? Why would Umno want to kill the best friend they have in PAS? Or are the people behind the video those who view Mustafa Ali as a threat to Pakatan Rakyat as well as a threat to Anwar Ibrahim’s ambition to become Prime Minister?

Honestly I do not know. But if I had to hazard a guess I would guess that Umno would be the last one who would want to see Mustafa Ali killed off.

I have always said, in politics you need to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. And has this not been proven so many times?