MAHATHIR IS CAUSING MORE DAMAGE TO PAKATAN THAN BARISAN EVER COULD

Najib needs not rush to call for the next general election as he still has one year to watch Pakatan Harapan self-destruct. The longer Mahathir ‘leads’ Pakatan Harapan the more damage he causes. Having Mahathir in Pakatan Harapan is an asset to Barisan Nasional. Mahathir is causing more damage to Pakatan Harapan than Barisan Nasional ever could. It is like releasing a bull in a china shop.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

According to Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, there are three reasons why Pakatan Harapan must name its Prime Minister-in-waiting.

1. It will signal to the rakyat that Pakatan Harapan is the government-in-waiting

2. It will dispel myths

3. It will draw a ‘X vs Y’ comparison which favours Pakatan Harapan

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Syed Saddiq said people are asking if not Kit Siang then who?

Basically, what Syed Saddiq said is what Malaysia Today has been saying over the last few months. DAP is expected to win the majority of the seats. So, if Pakatan Harapan wins, say, 125 parliament seats in the next general election, it will be because DAP won 55 seats while the other members of Pakatan Harapan won 70 seats. If not Pakatan Harapan will not be able to win 125 seats in parliament.

Now, if DAP wins 55 seats that would mean PKR won 35 seats while PAN and Pribumi won another 35 seats combined (say 25 and 10 seats respectively). If, however, DAP wins just 40 seats, PKR 30, PAN 15 and Pribumi 5, the total would be just 90 seats and that means Barisan Nasional (with 132 seats) and not Pakatan Harapan (with 90 seats) would be forming the new federal government.

You do not need to be a political analyst to understand this. All it takes is simple maths. There are 222 seats in parliament. A simple majority is 112 seats. A safe majority is 125 seats to ensure that your government does not fall a few days after being formed.

So, if you need 125 seats, unless you can sweep 35 of Sabah and Sabah’s 57 parliament seats, DAP must win 55 seats, PKR must win 35, and PAN-Pribumi another 35. And that means Pakatan Harapan’s future depends on DAP, which in turn depends on 90% of the Chinese votes. If not Pakatan Harapan is going to remain the opposition for a long time to come.

And this was why Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said it is no use naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting now. If Pakatan Harapan does not win the next general election then naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting is an academic exercise or, as Mahathir said, syok sendiri (getting a hard on). Mahathir said Pakatan Harapan must first win the general election and then talk about who should be Prime Minister after that.

So who is really Pakatan Harapan’s Prime Minister-in-waiting?

However, as Syed Saddiq said, not naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting now gives the impression that if Pakatan Harapan wins the next general election then Lim Kit Siang is going to be the Prime Minister. And since DAP must win 55 of the 115-125 seats for Pakatan Harapan to be able to win the next general election, DAP will be the one to determine who shall be the Prime Minister (like what happened in Perak in 2008 when DAP won the most number of seats in the State Assembly and decided that Nizar Jamaluddin shall be the Menteri Besar).

Hence, what Syed Saddiq is saying (naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting now) puts this matter to rest and will end all speculation. If not, as Syed Saddiq said, people will say the Prime Minister-in-waiting is ‘either Lim Kit Siang or a DAP puppet’.

The other problem that Syed Saddiq raised is that since the objective of the next general election is to remove Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, Pakatan Harapan has to offer the alternative or comparison to Najib. If not the voters are going to ask: remove Najib and replace him with whom?

Now, while what Syed Saddiq said makes sense (which is why he is Asia’s best debater and he won the United Asia Debate Championship in May 2015), leaving the matter of Pakatan Harapan’s Prime Minister-in-waiting open is safer than naming him or her and hence closing the door to any further discussion.

A false show of unity while the fighting behind the scenes is ferocious

Once Kit Siang agrees to naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting there is no turning back. Pakatan Harapan would have passed the point of no return. And Kit Siang would rather he has a fallback plan and can do a U-turn in case things do not quite work out the way they planned. Furthermore, naming the Prime Minister-in-waiting is going to tigger a civil war in Pakatan Harapan and will cause its breakup.

Kit Siang has to name either himself as the Prime Minister-in-waiting (which means they would lose the Malay votes) or he names Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar Ibrahim, Muhyiddin Yassin, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Mukhriz Mahathir, Mat Sabu, Azmin Ali, Zaid Ibrahim or someone like that.

All those names (Kit Siang’s name as well) carry a tremendous amount of baggage. There is no name that is acceptable to, say, 70% of the voters. And you need someone who more than half the voters can accept. And there is no such person in that list of nine names. Is there maybe a tenth candidate who more than half or 70% of the voters can accept?

Since the next general election is about Najib who is Pakatan Harapan’s alternative to Najib?

It is quite normal in any country that the Prime Minister or President has less than 50% approval rating. So, trying to find someone who has more than 50% or 70% approval rating is extremely difficult.

Pakatan Harapan should have made the next general election about policies. They should have published position papers on various hot issues so that the voters would know what they are getting by voting Pakatan Harapan.

Instead, they turned the next general election into an anti-Najib campaign. And herein lies the problem, as Syed Saddiq pointed out. Since this is about Najib then you need to show the alternative to Najib. And Pakatan Rakyat does not have that alternative to Najib. And this was what Syed Saddiq was lamenting about.

Najib, on the other hand, is sitting pretty. At this stage of the game Najib needs not do anything or prove anything. The ball is in Pakatan Harapan’s court. The onus is now on Pakatan Harapan to prove that their Prime Minister-in-waiting is far, far better than Najib. But they cannot do this.

Najib needs not rush to call for the next general election as he still has one year to watch Pakatan Harapan self-destruct. The longer Mahathir ‘leads’ Pakatan Harapan the more damage he causes. Having Mahathir in Pakatan Harapan is an asset to Barisan Nasional. Mahathir is causing more damage to Pakatan Harapan than Barisan Nasional ever could. It is like releasing a bull in a china shop.

Every time Mahathir opens his mouth Pakatan Harapan loses votes. For example, Mahathir has just insulted ‘fat people’ and about 18% of Malaysians are obese while 30% are overweight. So that is going to cost Pakatan Harapan many votes. You need just 5% of the votes to win or lose the next general election. Hence 18-30% is going to hurt Pakatan Harapan real bad.

The issue is no longer about whether Barisan Nasional is going to win the next general election. The issue is about whether Barisan Nasional is going to win back its two-thirds majority in Parliament. For Barisan Nasional to win a two-thirds majority they must win 148 seats. For Pakatan Harapan to deny Barisan Nasional its two-thirds majority in parliament they must win not less than 75 seats. And at this stage Pakatan Harapan might be hard-pressed to win even 70 seats unless the voters are told who their Prime Minister-in-waiting is and Mahathir stops shooting his own feet.