Hadi: Not seeing the forest for the trees

Every organisation contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

COMMENT

PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang, in calling for a Government of National Unity in an interview with Today earlier this week in Singapore, ventured the theory that the burning political issue in Malaysia was not former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad or Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. The issue, according to Hadi, was Umno.

That’s like not seeing the forest for the trees. Umno is just another tree like Mahathir and Najib. What’s happening in Umno brings to mind the age-old saying that every organisation contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein Onn thinks that the key to the resolution of the ongoing political crisis in Malaysia was not to change the leadership. He cited Libya and Iraq as examples.

Hishammuddin and Najib are members of the ruling elite and in the immediate run it’s this group of people who is standing in the way of the country achieving genuine political stability. They belabour in the delusion that the retention of the Sedition Act, and even strengthening it, and introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), as the right moves in taking the country forward. In short, continued rule by the ruling Malay elite in ensuring political stability.

The ongoing political instability in the country in fact began during Mahathir’s time. Just as Libya and Iraq proves, examples cited by the self-serving Hishammuddin, political instability is not created by a change of leadership but by it remaining too long in power. The longer a ruling party remains in power, and enforces an artificial kind of stability, the greater and more prolonged the instability that follows when that party eventually falls, as it must some day.

No party in the history of the world has ruled anywhere indefinitely. If any ruling party cannot be overthrown through elections, it simply means that the people have lost their sovereignty to a handful in power. This was the case for Washington to lead a coalition of the willing to remove Saddam Hussein from power and restore sovereignty to the people of Iraq.

It’s those who were ousted in Baghdad by the US who are behind the Islamic Caliphate promoted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS). IS doesn’t believe in elections to have a share of the political power. They believe that power can be won through the barrel of a gun and maintained by it as Saddam Hussein did.

Najib and the ruling Malay elite used IS as an excuse for POTA. Mahathir thinks that the key to saving Malaysia is to oust Najib and save Umno.

That’s like going back to the mistakes that Mahathir made during his 22 years in power. It’s because Mahathir stayed too long in power that we are faced with the ongoing political instability. It’s because Umno has been too long in power that we are faced with political instability.

The key to achieving political stability does not lie in saving Umno but in ensuring that there can be a peaceful transition of power from one ruling coalition to a new coalition. That new coalition can either be one which looks beyond the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) and the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and made up of MPs, as suggested by DAP elder statesman Lim Kit Siang, or a new government formed come 2018 by Pakatan Rakyat.

Mahathir views the prospect of a Pakatan Rakyat-led government in Putrajaya with horror. He sees such a government opening the books and carting off BN leaders to jail on various charges for abuse of power, conflict of interest and corruption. There are no prizes for guessing this possibility. It’s something that has to happen and will happen given that BN has been in power for nearly six decades without having to provide any public accounting. There has been a total lack of transparency.

Mahathir saving Umno through ousting Najib merely postpones the inevitable.

The restoration of the people’s sovereignty is the single greatest issue in the peninsula and Sarawak in particular and Malaysia in general. The fate of Umno is the least of the people’s concerns. The Dayaks and the Dusuns have ceased to be the key factor in politics in Sabah and Sarawak. Likewise, the Malays in the peninsula will in the years ahead cease to be the key factor in politics. By that time, they, like the Dayaks and Dusuns will no longer put all their political eggs in one basket. Putting all the eggs in one basket does not benefit the people but only a handful of leaders and the people around them.

Hadi, not so long ago, was rooting for a PAS-Umno Malay Muslim Unity Government.

Obviously, he no longer has such hopes since Umno senses that it can dethrone PAS in its stronghold in Kelantan. The situation here is 55:45, albeit more in favour of PAS, but the Islamists can only hang on by the skin of their teeth if they come through in 2018. Kelantan will fall in 2023 to a new party.