Anwar must be a leader Malays need, not what the elites want

“I don't pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.”

- Gracchus (Gladiator)

This is Anwar Ibrahim’s final shot at the throne of Putrajaya. The stakes are not only personal, but the trajectory of this country depends on whether Pakatan Harapan can galvanise an electorate narcotised by not only religious and racial imperatives but also a deep sense of pessimism that the political elites of this country do not want any kind of change.

Now that Anwar has been chosen by Harapan to lead, everyone in Harapan should rally behind him. This is about coalition discipline and even if Anwar missteps, what Harapan should do is not spin but clarify and not use these missteps as opportunities to relitigate past failures.

Like most right-wing hegemons the world over, the political elites in this country use race and religion as a means to subvert democratic norms while remaining within the margins of democracy. The ultimate aim, of course, is a kind of fascist faux democracy which would enable rule in perpetuity.

Much has been written about the Malays needing to change. About how the Malays need to decide what kind of country they want this to be. Forget about the reality of unfair weightage in votes or the gerrymandering, the reality is that the opposition has never offered an alternative for what this country could be and the demonisation that has traction with urban communities means nothing to the rural voter mired in systemic problems of their own.

The Malay uber alles elites in this country want the Malays to remain stagnant while they plunder the country in the name of race and religion. Remember when Harapan came to power with Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the helm, the establishment especially the judiciary breathed a sigh of relief because they knew cosa nostra would resume.

Anwar needs to be the kind of leader who eschews such tools but instead in rhetoric and policy, has a Malay-centric agenda which does not marginalise or demonise the non-Malay community. Why spend money on religious programmes when money could be spent on improving infrastructure, healthcare and education for rural Malay communities?

Indeed, all of this should be done on a state level if Harapan is not in control of those states but has the crown of Putrajaya.

Religious bureaucracy

Observe how PAS insulted the royalty when it came to the Bon Odori festival but then its president Abdul Hadi Awang uses the Agong to legitimise the back door government. In other words, the religious bureaucracy that PAS and its ilk use, needs to be reformed and not in the way Mujahid Yusof Rawa attempted to.

What Anwar and Harapan need to do is redefine the race and religion narrative, laying the blame squarely on the Malay political establishment, be it Umno, Bersatu, PAS, Pejuang, etc.

Why are the Malays lagging behind? Don’t blame the non-Malays, blame the Malay political elites. This is also why right-wing hegemons, fear class narratives because they know that once people figure out their game, their positions become untenable.

This is why Hadi goes on about the culture war, like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd) and various Western influences.

Anwar and Harapan should not take the bait but instead remind the Malays that Hadi uses religion and race to keep them down while enjoying the excesses of political power and privilege. This type of class/race narrative is the kind of populism that brought Anwar into power in the first place but was abandoned after political operatives tasted power and the goal became to retain power.

As one former Umno political operative told me. You build a surau even though the village does not need one and you get an ecosystem of patronage that pays dividends during an election. The same could be accomplished with a school or healthcare facilities but this means that voters become educated and the risk of complete support becomes dodgy. We cannot have that, can we?

This is what Anwar's "Malay agenda" should be about. Empowering the Malays.

Similarly, please stop the religious cosplay by the DAP. This does absolutely nothing for rural Malay communities and while it may warm the hearts of out-of-touch urbanites it merely reinforces establishment propaganda about the hypocrisy of the DAP.

DAP should drop the Bangsa Malaysia kool-aid and instead rely on Malay grassroots-level activists and act as handmaidens for policies which benefit rural communities even though it may befuddle its urban bases.

Nobody is saying that a political party cannot use religion. The question is how do you use religion? And I'm not talking about feel-good rhetoric about how religions are equal and everyone's the same but rather policies that actually help rural communities instead of restricting them transmitted by a reformed religious bureaucracy.

I am talking about using religions as a means to transmit ideas of good governance by building better schools which in turn equips young people to deal with the vagaries of changing geopolitical and environmental landscapes. And not using religion to restrict women - rural women suffer the most from this kind of religious agenda even though the brunt of family welfare is borne by them - and using religion to stifle free speech.

Rural voters

Caretaker prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob acknowledged the wastage (and we know the corruption) which entitlements programmes meant to “uplift” the Malay community but instead were part of the cosa nostra endeavours of the political elites.

We know why the use of English, modernising rural schools, healthcare and environmental policies that affect rural Malays were not given the attention it needed simply because for the elites, these reliable vote banks needed to be dependent on the political apparatus.

I did an interview with PSM’s Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj in which he articulated the reality of rural voters: "Some communities have scolded the BN types who admonished them. Sometimes their overt support for us decreases for a bit, but if their main grievances are not handled by the BN, then it's a matter of time before they come back to us for assistance.

“So, in this game, timing is crucial. Sometimes we have to give them room to explore the options offered by the other side, and not try to hold them back by threats or ‘emotional blackmail’. But we must maintain contact so that we know when there is a need to mobilise them to protest some blatantly unfair decision of the government.”

When Umno says it has a strong grassroots, what it means is that it has the cash to sustain a system of feudalism that was an asset when it comes to elections. Umno does not have that now or at least it is severely crippled.

With Perikatan Nasional slowly chipping away at its bases and the money train mired in internal schisms, this is an opportunity for Anwar to redefine the narrative.

The best way to deal with those marginalised groups who seem cut off from mainstream oppositional politics is to make an alliance with political parties like PSM. Grand national narratives do not get any traction with the voting groups that PSM engages with.

This is another world, and it is this way because the Umno hegemon set it up this way and the opposition has never had a genuine agenda to bridge this world and mainstream oppositional politics.

Howard Lee, for instance, is better off listening to the strategies of PSM operatives in his upcoming political rumble in the heartland rather than relying on counsel from the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur.

Unlike some, I think the Perak Gateway gambit is a good political play if risky. But If Anwar and Harapan remain disciplined and provide a policy in which the Malay benefit after decades of Malay uber alles rule, Anwar could be the Malay leader Mahathir always envisioned himself as.

This is not about not spooking the Malays. The Malay elites want Harapan to be a chintzy substitute. This is about spooking the Malay elites.

Happy Deepavali, Malaysia. - Mkini

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.