2018 was the best year – but let’s not give up

“2018 - that was the best year,” a human rights lawyer told me recently as we lamented the stillborn dream that was a progressive new Malaysia.

I had to agree – who would have thought the euphoria in the aftermath of the change of government would prove to be a high watermark of my life as a Malaysian as we slowly slipped beneath the waters.

I was sent to a World Editors Roundtable in the EU headquarters in Brussels in late 2018 and it was a great thing to see and feel that Malaysia had reclaimed our dignity in the eyes of many. A fresh new start as we overthrew a kleptocracy at the ballot box. The culmination of reformasi, Bersih and all our hopes and dreams as citizens.

So now, as tough as it is, as depressing as the gradual unfolding of the Pakatan Harapan administration has been, as brutally uninspiring as the new cabinet looks, true Malaysian patriots have to go out and do it all over again.

It’s been about three weeks since I wrote this column – Politics – a game in which your vote means very little – and I have to say that I waited a while after the government fell because I didn’t want to write anything too volatile in an emotional time.

That column was about how our elected representatives stood poised to make a mockery of our vote, and sure enough, that played itself out within a week of the column’s publication. I also referred to the sycophants who were the cogs in the machine of old Malaysia – you will see them jostling for position strutting their stuff right now. Jostling indeed.

I also kept referring to how the root of the problem was the old man himself, and to me, that is still very, very clear – the initial impetus for the fall of the government came from Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s unwillingness to hand over power as promised.

Don’t get fooled by the various twists and turns that took place during the political machinations that have returned Umno to power with PAS in tow – no one planned it quite that way, but the political crisis stemmed from Mahathir’s greed to hang on to power.

Yesterday we saw six Dewan Negara Senate appointments sworn in so they could join Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s cabinet. Mahathir’s Prime Minister’s Office sat on those vacancies for many months – Harapan could have appointed up to 16 senators by last December. That, to me, is a telling delay.

Even when explaining himself at a function in Kedah over the weekend, Mahathir’s willingness to drop DAP and PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim, and work with PAS was all too clear. The only disagreement with Muhyiddin was over working with a handful of Umno leaders facing court trials.

Think about it, in the end the second coming of Mahathir was not the gateway to a new Malaysia. There was no commitment to reforms, no respect for the manifesto and no intention of handing over power. PKR did its part by backing Mahathir as PM, and suddenly he is asking Anwar to prove his support? That’s clearly an act of bad faith. It is my belief that this move was only one of two or three options that were planned to stop Anwar's ascension and the fulfilment of the people’s mandate.

So I’m going to refer to this tragedy one final time today because I think it’s important to counter the false narratives that are floating out there.

But it’s time to look beyond the failed promise of 2018. Look beyond the anger of the rakyat, especially those that took one look at the composition of the new regime and felt like a racist takeover had been enacted.

The new administration has quite a challenge, but building a new multi-racial Malaysia doesn’t seem to be foremost in its goals. It was a good move not to nominate the Umno bosses who are embroiled in corruption trials and there are some goodies that will be released to buy some goodwill.

However, there are some serious challenges for whoever holds the reins – the aftermath of the looting of state resources by the previous regime, the Covid-19 outbreak and an increasingly polarised population that questions the legitimacy of the new leaders.

As for the Harapan parties – PKR, Amanah and DAP – they have to look at their mistakes honestly if they are to avoid repeating them.

Anwar indisputably failed to keep his party together. He’s a great orator and has suffered a fair degree of political persecution in his life, but he is a poor manager of party apparatus and that has probably stolen defeat from the jaws of victory.

In the somewhat feudal world of Malay politics, he also has the wrong branding, but I won’t blame him for that as it’s partly due to his willingness to work with other races (post-1998 when he was jailed). I won’t forget the almost sacred role of PKR as the only Malay-led multi-racial party in a nation that has threatened to drown in a river of racial and religious rhetoric.

It’s been done before. At least the myth of invincibility and inevitably about BN rule has forever been shattered. Harapan still holds Penang and Selangor and it can perhaps be done again.

But I doubt Harapan has the courage and vision to really think out of the box. Draw the lines clearly between good and evil, the future and the past. To me, this could best be accomplished by a merger of its three component parties (with a three- to five-year moratorium on party elections to avoid bloodletting). Veterans like Anwar and DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang should step aside and present a team of 222 reformist candidates in the next GE (or less, depending on alliances in Sabah and Sarawak).

That would be something really daring, so that Malaysia can move beyond the paradigm of the past.

Right now there is a great danger that our Parliament might become a farce with the right-wing Malay parties in alliance on one side, and the DAP-PKR-Amanah axis on the other. Neither one strong enough to rule without the help of unscrupulous party hoppers of the likes of Keningau MP Jeffrey Kitingan (above). Imagine the future of our country held hostage by that sort of politician.

Harapan MPs and state representatives have to question why they became so silent on important issues once they were part of the government. Was it a government that was pro-worker, pro-poor, pro-marginalised? In intentions, it was doubtless leaps ahead of the Najib-era regime. But I am not so sure in terms of achievement.

If PKR-DAP-Amanah do not take a daring risk, they will be left with the same dynamic – foolishly competing for communal interests (for example DAP vs MCA) instead of taking the whole country by the scruff of the neck and trying to drag it forward. If they truly believed in a multi-ethnic progressive Malaysia, now might be the best time to take that step.

As the general public, we too need to ask ourselves – did we do too little and expect too much? Chances are for most of us – the answer is yes. It’s clear that rather than succumbing to despondency our politics needs fresh blood. Do you want to step up?

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MARTIN VENGADESAN is a Malaysiakini team member.