Appointing 'hide and seek' ex-PM a blunder by Ismail Sabri

 

Newly appointed Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob is going to have to squirm out of the shadows of figures like his party president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and PM predecessor Muhyiddin Yassin if he is to avoid being just a stop-gap leader.

Thus appointing Muhyiddin as the National Recovery Council (NRC) chairperson with the status of minister can only be seen as a shocking blunder.

Muhyiddin, who was recently described by PKR elder Syed Husin Ali as just about the "worst prime minister" we have had, has already established a discredited reputation as an unelected leader who spent much of his premiership playing hide-and-seek from the voters, opposition and his own coalition dissenters who eventually brought down the government.

He assumed power through defections and backroom dealings that followed the Sheraton Move and spent much of his 17 months in power avoiding a confidence vote, even resorting to a much-criticised declaration of emergency that mainly served the purpose of suspending Parliament and allowing the executive to rule unchecked.

Muhyiddin’s stint as premier also ended in ignominy following a royal rebuke of one of his ministers, Takiyuddin Hassan, over the ending of that ill-conceived emergency and a revolt by his own coalition partner Umno which helped elevate Ismail Sabri to his top job.

He left behind a shattered economy that saw four successive quarters of negative growth and a failed attempt to contain the Covid-19 pandemic which has us ranked among the world’s highest daily Covid-19 cases per capita and careering towards 20,000 deaths.

To make matters worse, his administration was known among the people for its dua darjat (double standards) - punishing the ordinary folk with hefty fines for Covid-19 standard operating procedure (SOP) violations while overlooking similar offences among the elite.

Syed Husin, in offering such as damning assessment of Muhyiddin said that the Pagoh MP didn’t have enough of a majority and thus was busy securing the support of fellow parliamentarians in whatever way he could, quite often in the form of appointments to government-linked companies (GLCs). 

“His administration was also burdening the country with huge debts and, at the same time, allocating themselves public funds with not enough transparency to show how the money was spent,” Syed Husin told Malaysiakini in a phone interview.

“Under Muhyiddin, Covid-19 went from bad to worse and we ended up with a healthcare system that was overstretched.

“Economic conditions are getting disastrous with people losing jobs, companies closing down and prices going up.

“Everywhere you look, things were going from bad to worse. That is Muhyiddin’s legacy,” he added. 

And I wholeheartedly concur.

So why is Ismail Sabri making this move, when he is already burdened with the realpolitik of having to appoint many of the same ministers in Muhyiddin’s underperforming regime that was dubbed #KerajaanGagal?

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and former premier Muhyiddin Yassin

Indeed to make matters worse, Attorney-General Idrus Harun has just stated that a vote of confidence for Ismail Sabri is not necessary as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong had already appointed him as prime minister as per the Federal Constitution and such a vote could actually undermine the king's powers.

This smacks of the same sort of reason that allowed Muhyiddin to cling on desperately in full view of the nation - let’s not forget he was seen publically trying to haggle with the opposition while dangling some reforms as a carrot.

It should not be forgotten that when Muhyiddin was home minister in the Pakatan Harapan administration, his actions were often betrayed as an anti-reform stance that helped increase frustration with that administration - actions such as appointing a questionable task force to reinvestigate the alleged enforced disappearances of pastor Raymond Koh and activist Amri Che Mat.

He also wasted the public’s time and money (not to mention insulting its intelligence) in investigating the Women’s Day march 2019 for sedition and going after alleged Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sympathisers a full 10 years after that movement was wiped out.

And in July 2019, after the then health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad and then law minister Liew Vui Keong had announced that the government would work towards removing criminal penalties for the personal possession and use of drugs, Muhyiddin’s Home Ministry came up with a hardline proposal for "drug prisons". 

All along, this charming Malay-first, Malaysian-later leader has been a stumbling block to progress and failed to deliver what the rakyat needed.

And now Ismail Sabri wants to give him a most important job - to recover from the mess that Muhyiddin himself contributed towards creating! It would be farcical if it was not so tragic for the nation.

Let’s not forget that Muhyiddin’s shortest-ever stint and position near the bottom of the barrel, comes despite the presence of a kleptocrat who has been convicted on corruption charges and a megalomaniac whose attempts to avoid handing over power as promised was a trigger for our current political stalemate. - Mkini

---

MARTIN VENGADESAN is associate editor at Malaysiakini.