Quo vadis, PKR? Anwar spouts tired rhetoric, Rafizi still only disrupts

 

From Ibrahim M Ahmad

Temperatures may have run high, tempers may have flared, but at the end of the day, did the rakyat hear anything new? Probably not.

For Anwar Ibrahim, the PKR congress held over the weekend must have been a chastening experience.

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The party, born to avenge a blackeye he suffered almost 22 years ago, appears to be finally loosening itself from his grip.

His heir apparent appears to have emerged.

Twelve of new deputy president Rafizi Ramli’s allies were elected to PKR’s 20-member central leadership council, effectively giving Rafizi the upper hand over Anwar.

With the party president’s post uncontested, that result constituted the nearest possible message to the former deputy prime minister that his once mighty powers are waning considerably.

Anwar’s public appeal, born of an injustice suffered at the hands of iron-fisted former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, which drew worldwide condemnation for Mahathir and large-scale sympathy for him, has all but evaporated after he squandered multiple opportunities to helm the country.

Heavy defeats at the recent Melaka and Johor state elections have made that point abundantly clear.

The reality is that PKR’s party elections were a referendum on Anwar’s leadership and his part in Pakatan Harapan’s failure to hold on to Putrajaya after the coalition imploded from within.

Clearly, the party wants to move on from him.

That was the main – and probably only – message that came out from the just concluded congress: a message Rafizi sought to deliver to Anwar and members of his inner circle in no uncertain terms.

Ever defiant, Anwar responded by threatening bickering hopefuls that he will not sign off their nominations for the upcoming general election.

Regrettably, the party’s top two leaders had no broader message for the rakyat at the congress.

Anwar repeated a tired mantra about the need to battle “thieves and the corrupt”, and even claimed that he was not able to fulfil his promise of lower petrol prices simply because he was not made prime minister.

Rafizi, on the other hand, has made a career in politics by being a disrupter. Regrettably, the congress did not reveal him to be much more than that. In fact, he came across as the bitter victor – a classic oxymoron.

Neither one of them spoke of plans and ideas to heal the nation’s fractured political system, cool inflation, attract foreign investment, improve our floundering ringgit, reinvigorate markets and businesses, develop industries, boost exports, generate employment, empower parliament, restore faith in Malaysia’s crumbling government, civil service and government-linked companies, etc.

The nation’s largest multiracial party did not even offer solutions to heal the ever-deepening racial and religious divide.

The ‘to-do’ list of the next administration is endless, but the reality is that PKR offers no panacea for the nation’s ills.

For that reason, there is no expectation that the public will buy into the party’s aimless rhetoric any more than in the recent past.

The question is, if that happens and PKR is trounced at GE15, will Rafizi again throw his toys out of the pram and walk away?- FMT

Ibrahim M Ahmad is an FMT reader.

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