Malaysians had a lot to be proud of on May 9, 2018. I’ll leave the reminiscing and nostalgia to my more eloquent colleagues. The question that keeps nagging at me is: why isn’t every day May 9?
The general elections held two years ago today represented the triumph of the people over bad governance. But why are we only given an opportunity to do this only on one day every five or so years?
On the other 1,825 days, we seem to put our fates and destiny entirely into the hands of a few political elites. The last few days seem to be quite representative of what those elites we surrender our power to do with those days.
Long story short, it looks like the nightmare of the "Sheraton Move" is not over.
Let’s do a quick recap. Feb 23: Sheraton Meeting; March 1: Muhyiddin Yassin sworn in as PM; March 18: the MCO comes into effect. This appeared to mark a ceasefire, as the nation rightfully focused on fighting Covid-19.
May 4: Conditional MCO comes into effect. May 7: Shafie Apdal tables a motion of confidence in Dr Mahathir Mohammad. On that same day, Anwar Ibrahim announces that he is the opposition leader.
It appears that the minute the MCO was lifted, Malaysian politics picked up almost exactly where it left off.
In thinking about the quagmire that Malaysia’s old guard seems to be stuck in, I recall a song from my youth Bizarre Love Triangle. I thought of the song title predominantly when looking at the situation from the Pakatan Harapan perspective.
The triangle here would consist of Mahathir, Anwar, and at this point, Muhyiddin. The very first shot and immediate counter-shot we saw on May 7 probably reveals the only point that matters: that Harapan is in no better shape today than it was on the day that Mahathir resigned as prime minister.
Clearly there is one faction that wants Mahathir to return as PM, while another prefers Anwar. The Mahathir-Anwar spat of 1998 threw the country into deep conflict, and two decades later, that conflict is still the key bottleneck.
Anwar is slowly accepting what many have long believed - that there is no way Mahathir will hand over power to him.
Indeed, Mahathir’s resignation as PM this year showed that he was willing to gamble everything just to consolidate his position against Anwar even though Anwar had only days earlier publicly pledged again to unconditionally let Mahathir decide when to hand over power.
Despite already having lost once in this game of poker, the political moves of these past few days show that Mahathir has not budged from this position at all - somehow believing that he can still rally enough forces behind him to become an elected PM at the age of 9, after having already been elected PM at the age of 92.
Anwar reacted by immediately announcing that he was the opposition leader - clearly stating his own claim to the throne once again.
Had all of Harapan rallied immediately and consistently behind either Mahathir or Anwar post-Sheraton, one or the other would be PM today. The same probably holds true today. But they couldn’t then, and they clearly can’t now. So, nothing has changed.
The joint statement by Mahathir and Anwar today on the anniversary of Harapan’s victory may have given a glimmer of hope but beyond the eloquent emotional themes of the statement, there was no indication that the key problem between these two men - the inability to agree on the issue that arguably caused the collapse of the Harapan government - remains unsolved.
While we may have hoped against hope before for some peaceful transition between the two men, I think Malaysians are now at a once bitten, twice shy stage.
This isn’t to say that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government is on particularly steady footing either - if indeed PN exists at all, a fact which Umno seems to now be contesting. Once the PM runs out of lucrative GLC positions to dole out, will his own position be secure?
Mahathir’s no-confidence motion may, in fact, achieve little more beyond giving Umno better bargaining power against Muhyiddin.
We are literally struggling for our lives today, fighting against Covid-19. Now more than ever, Malaysia needs united leadership to galvanise a whole of society approach to this crisis.
Instead, we are surrounded by a sea of unending political instability and infighting. The minute the government signalled (far too prematurely, arguably) that we might be out of our most dangerous phase, politicians are at each other’s throats again - fighting for their political futures instead of focusing on the Covid-19 crisis.
As the song goes, it’s as if they were forever Living the life that (they) can’t leave behind. Another song, Civil War by Guns and Roses, opens with a line from the movie Cool Hand Luke: “What we’ve got here, is failure to communicate.”
I think what we’ve got here in Malaysia, is failure to democracy. That’s not a grammatical error. Like most of the rest of the world, we seem to have forgotten what democracy is supposed to actually be about.
Where once democracy was about consensus building and people having a direct say in how their lives were governed, democracy today has become little more than senseless competitions about which tribe of elites get richer - “The billions shift from side to side, and the wars go on with brainwashed pride.”
The political impasse in Malaysia is a direct result of a system of "democracy" that allows governments to change at a drop of a hat and one in which the only question that matters is how to win elections.
In lustful pursuit of this goal and all the money it brings, everything else is sacrificed - principles, the practice of consensus building and national unity.
As long as the structures, formulas and strategies of the old guard remain - no matter which side they are on - so will our pointless, destructive political quagmire.
If we truly want to break free, we have to do more than change a few people or hand over reins to younger leaders. The incentive structures of existing systems are so strong that these vehicles have a mind of their own, and changing the drivers will not be sufficient.
Instead, the entire structure and DNA of sociopolitical movements need to be redesigned from the ground up.
Malaysia needs leaders that are grounded in clear, unshakeable principles, as well as movements in which these leaders have built true and lasting bonds based on those principles - bonds that will always outweigh petty infighting or the pursuit of narrow, selfish interests.
Senator Liew Chin Tong astutely suggested that there were no less than 10 different factions within PN, each pulling in different directions, a clear example of how factionalism is inherent to our system.
In a more recent piece, he rather less astutely criticised civil society organisations (CSOs) for criticising Harapan in order to ‘"show off (their) neutrality" when they should have "come forward to learn about governing".
Firstly, as I recall, CSOs tried extremely hard to engage with the Harapan government and influence policy but found themselves constantly rebuffed or given the merry-go-round multiple times.
More importantly, I think Liew has gotten it entirely backwards. It is not CSOs who should try to imitate politicians, but politicians who should learn from CSOs.
CSOs and activists are far from perfect, but I am seeing more and more every day how they are the ones who are able to prioritise the welfare of the rakyat ahead of their own personal ambitions. It is they who are willing to set aside race and religion and work together to help the most vulnerable communities.
You need not look any further than the Covid-19 crisis to see how these organisations and individuals are anxiously working day and night to help those who were made extremely vulnerable during the MCO, while politicians were still busy blaming each other over who caused the crisis, and plotting and scheming over who would get what position.
Malaysia has had enough of such toxic politics. We need to move forwards and evolve, not move backwards and end up right back where we started.
It’s time we stopped relying on old-style politics and start finding better ways to lead ourselves. We did it two years ago but we don’t have to wait another three years to do it again. As Guns and Roses sang: “You can't trust freedom, when it's not in your hands.”
NATHANIEL TAN works with Projek Wawasan Rakyat (POWR). He dreams of Malaysia 2.0 and can be reached at nat@engage.my. - Mkini
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