Happy Anniversary Ismail Sabri – populist PM extraordinaire!

 

From Ibrahim M Ahmad

Happy first anniversary in office to Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

I am sorry that I cannot refer to you as our “beloved” prime minister. As you know, the rakyat did not put you where you are. We voted for an entirely different coalition, but they bungled badly. Too bad for them.

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You were put there by your crumbling party in a desperate attempt to cling on to power. Its former president, convicted of corruption and struggling to present his appeal at the Federal Court, looks destined to spend the next decade or so in prison. Its current president looks set to follow.

I presume you were put there as their proxy or, at the very least, as a placeholder. Perhaps they thought you would use your office to somehow secure their release so that they can come back and claim their thrones.

Otherwise, they must have dreamt they would somehow prove their innocence in court and that you would lead Umno and the rakyat to welcome them back rapturously. How wrong they have been.

Having hamstrung the opposition with a memorandum of understanding last year, you appear to have cemented your place in Putrajaya with a series of populist policies.

A Malay-centric government and Malay-centric policies that include reviving your Mara Digital Mall idea to appease the majority, locking in toll charges on our highways, toll-free travel during Hari Raya, scrapping approved permits (APs) for imported food items, removing and then reinstating cooking oil subsidies, invoking the divine to fight inflation, and very shortly an election budget (likely littered with cash handouts again).

Even I will acknowledge that you have used the past year well. You have left your party president with no option but to make you Umno’s poster boy for the next general election (GE15) – whenever YOU decide it is time to have one.

Your latest move has also not gone unnoticed – at least not by me.

Those who ridiculed your promise to build drag racing circuits in every state failed to see that through one small “under the radar” event, you had managed to attract the attention of a 30,000-strong crowd of young Malay male voters.

In comparison, the opposition’s widely-publicised “Turun” demonstration last month drew only 500 protesters.

You truly are a master at what you do. For that, I must give you credit. - FMT

Ibrahim M Ahmad is an FMT reader.

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