No one must hijack people’s cause

The purity of the the #SaveMalaysia campaign has to be preserved.

COMMENT

More often than not, one finds Parliament to be something of a circus. The reception-cum-media area outside the Dewan proper has been the site of many a political grandstanding performance, and what better way for the first Parliament session of 2016 to begin than with yet more grandstanding?

Some Pakatan Harapan leaders set up shop to declare that releasing Anwar Ibrahim from prison was now one of the primary agendas of the #SaveMalaysia campaign launched last week by former PM Mahathir Mohamad. They say his release should be a cause on the same level as system reform because he was jailed under the same broken system the campaign seeks to reform.

That’s all well and good. Pakatan’s inability to produce a leader other than Anwar has been astounding, and it thus makes sense that its top priority is to secure the release of the uniting factor in the coalition. However, holding the campaign hostage to your agenda and placing the privilege of your influence over the concerns of the people at large reeks of obnoxious arrogance.

There is a lot of support on the ground for #SaveMalaysia, but not everyone is buying into Mahathir’s magic wand of acceptability, especially from among those disillusioned by Umno but wary and even hostile to the opposition. Forcing this agenda to the forefront of a multi-partisan, broad-based movement, and literally telling Mahathir he can complain all he likes because he isn’t part of a party with elected parliamentarians, is not exactly the way forward in trying to convince the 49% of the electorate you lost that you are not indeed what they accuse you to be.

Let’s make no mistake about this. We can all agree that there are many wrongs to be righted, and Anwar’s case is one that has attracted international attention for the perceived injustice of it all. The opposition parties must realise that the honeymoon is over and more and more people are watching them with scepticism. Moves like this only turn off more people who are looking for a change from politics-as-usual because it just proves that all politicians are the same.

There is one reason that the #SaveMalaysia campaign has received so much support. It’s not because of Mahathir, it’s not because of the opposition, it’s not because of civil society. It’s because we heard those four primary agendas of the campaign and we thought that this was free of partisan politics. We saw it as a people-first statement that made no note of any individual party’s agenda.

It is not that there is anything wrong with seeking Anwar’s release. But there’s need to preserve the purity of the cause that the rakyat bought into. There will be those who’ll say that there is no need for such meticulous attention to doing things the right way, but it matters precisely because “doing things the right way” is what the campaign is really about in the first place, at least to the people at large.

#SaveMalaysia is a people’s campaign and no partisan interest should be allowed to insert its own agendas into it.