Kit Siang’s bouquet for Musa, brickbat for Dr M

 

From Terence Netto

DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang’s opinion that Musa Hitam was the best prime minister Malaysia never had ought to be viewed against the backdrop of a video that made the rounds last year.

It showed Musa holding forth on an encounter he had with Kit Siang some time during the 22 months that Pakatan Harapan ruled the federal government.

Musa mused on how at that encounter Kit Siang had waxed euphoric about halcyon times for the DAP under the second premiership of Mahathir Mohamad.

Musa had been deputy prime minister (July 1981 to February 1986) during the first five years of Mahathir’s first tenure as prime minister (1981-2003). He had emerged from that experience leery of the methods and morals of Mahathir.

So when Kit Siang was lyrical about his party’s situation, the former deputy prime minister, who had a bitter falling out with Mahathir in early 1986 that led to his resignation, was unimpressed.

Sure, Kit Siang was entitled to bragging rights. DAP had six ministers in Mahathir’s Cabinet, with son Guan Eng holding the high-profile finance portfolio.

Attorney-General Tommy Thomas, a Mahathir appointee, dropped corruption charges against Guan Eng, first levied while the latter was Penang chief minister and Apandi Ali, Thomas’ predecessor, was the attorney-general.

DAP never had it so good. However, Musa remained unpersuaded by Kit Siang’s rapture. His scepticism prompted Kit Siang to inquire whether Musa did not believe in forgiveness.

Musa said it was not that he did not believe in forgiveness; it was just that he did not trust Mahathir.

Some time after the Pakatan Harapan government fell in late February 2020, Kit Siang was at another social event, also attended by Musa. This time, Kit Siang was at pains to avoid amiable badinage with Musa.

Obviously chagrined by the turn of events brought on by what the DAP stalwart would later denounce as Mahathir’s “egregious” decision to quit as Pakatan Harapan prime minister on Feb 24, 2020, Kit Siang’s earlier good vibes about Mahathir had been exposed as a case of vacuous optimism.

By contrast, Musa’s scepticism was wise. Hadn’t the philosopher George Santayana defined scepticism as the “chastity of the intellect”?

As reported by Free Malaysia Today, Kit Siang’s opinion of a hypothetical Musa premiership – “Musa is the best prime minister Malaysia never had” – was as much a reflection of his bitter disappointment with Mahathir as it was elation at the what-might-have-been had Musa become premier.

Musa would not have made the mistake that Mahathir committed in his first stint as prime minister – shifting Umno towards a stultifying Malay dominance that has, over time, poisoned the polity.

Prior to that pivot, Umno had steered by the concept of Malay primacy that was concerned to protect and advance Malay interests while avoiding crass neglect of non-Malay concerns. It was a tightrope act, requiring delicacy and proportion, quite beyond the hamsters that succeeded the first generation of Umno leaders.

Malay dominance has engendered among its wards a sense of entitlement that is destructive of personal integrity and competence.

Musa, who will be 88 in April, was too savvy a politician not to know that a sense of entitlement, if entrenched, would over time undermine Malay quality.

Ironically, on the occasion last week when Kit Siang remarked that Musa was the best prime minister Malaysia never had, the entitlement that foments mediocrity was on display in the remarks attributed to Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, putative poster boy of the newbie on the national political arena, Muda.

Syed Saddiq became entitled to lead Muda, which is an outgrowth of the Undi18 movement, largely because he has had, courtesy of Mahathir, a sedan-chair ride to national prominence.

He is not going to justify that leverage through comments such as Free Malaysia Today attributed to him regarding Kit Siang’s opinion of Musa.

Syed Saddiq had said: “I’m pretty sure they were at each other’s throats when they were younger. If you read many of Kit Siang’s books it was fairly obvious.”

Musa and Kit Siang, whose careers were coterminous, were never at each other’s throats.

To describe Musa Hitam’s politics in this manner is to fundamentally misperceive his style, which was refreshing when it was paraded during his deputy prime ministership and was in studied contrast to Mahathir’s dour public persona.

When growing up in Johor Bahru in the early 1950s, Musa would later recall how edified he was at the sight of politicians with clashing viewpoints within Umno councils earlier in the day, meeting up in the warongs (stalls) in the late evening, chatting hilariously over tea. The tenor, then, was convivial, not conflictual, as was the case not infrequently in heated political discussions earlier in the day.

From these observations, Musa derived his stance that politics must not be a matter of public antagonism. This explained his perennial smile and conviviality on public occasions as deputy prime minister.

This is not to suggest that Musa was interested only in tone, not content. He was the first major political leader who had, as early as 1985, cautioned that Malaysia was not Saudi Arabia or Iran, insisting that the country was unique.

In not so many words, he was saying that incipient trends boded an ominous turn away from Malaysia’s extant multi-racialism and religious pluralism.

Now that turn away has become entrenched. It’s left to Syed Saddiq and his cohort to retract that turn. It can’t be done with a sophomore’s understanding of Malaysia’s history and its principal players. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.