Anwar needs middle Malaysia and Umno, not Zahid

 

In the past few days, several opinion leaders have emerged to defend the rumoured appointment of embattled Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as deputy prime minister. They try to appear as realists, arguing that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has no choice.

If this bleak picture is indeed the reality, then the Anwar government would face three survival threats within a year, two involving Zahid’s own survival.

The first is the Umno party election which must be held by May 19, 2023, at the latest.

The second is the court verdict on Zahid’s Yayasan Akalbudi embezzlement case, which may come before or after the party election.

The third is the mid-term state election for the six Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional (PN) states, which may happen latest by September but possibly earlier.

If DPM Zahid is so indispensable to the Anwar government, what happens if Zahid loses the party election or gets convicted? And to avoid the new government collapsing because of Zahid, should he be allowed to use government resources to win the party election?

Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi

Should even the Attorney General’s Chamber withdraw Zahid's cases or somehow use the wrong litigation strategy to lose its case against Zahid?

If either or both of these happen, would the apologists also tell us that these are also the “bitter pills” that we have to swallow if we want the Harapan 2.0 government to survive?

Don’t challenge the middle-ground voters

If unfortunately, the Anwar government does think that it is so desperate for fear of a Sheraton 2.0, yet so powerful that it can ignore the public anger, it might have read the GE15 result very wrongly.

Compared to its 16 percent and 17 percent vote share in the Malacca and Johor state elections, PN had surged to a whopping 30 percent in GE15, eliminating Umno in all five northern states from Terengganu to Penang and grabbing Harapan constituencies from Permatang Pauh to Kuantan.

Is this strong swing towards PN a permanent shift? More likely, it was the angry anti-Zahid middle ground at work, benefiting PN amongst Malay-majority constituencies and Harapan in ethnically mixed constituencies.

This was much the product of automatic voter registration (AVR) and the lowering of the voting age to 18, bringing in some seven million new voters.

Now that all adult Malaysians can go to vote, without having to register themselves as voters and wait for several months, political parties are at the mercy of angry voters who can go out at any time to punish politicians and parties that offend them.

So far, Anwar has done all the right things, from rejecting the new Mercedes S600, to reaching out to senior civil servants, to promising no award of projects without tendering.

And the public has shown patience and understanding – for example, the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall’s call to leave the thorny issue of UEC recognition to time was popularly praised in the Chinese community, denying PN a weapon to instigate inter-communal contention.

How would the public take it if Zahid is made his deputy? Have his apologists done any surveys to gauge public sentiment on this?

For four years, partly thanks to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s contemptuous attitude towards manifestos, Harapan’s failure in realising its electoral promises was conveniently framed by its opponents as “rakyat kena kencing” (the people get peed upon/cheated).

Are Harapan parties ready to defend DPM Zahid when PN floods Tiktok, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook on this?

How to keep Umno in government for five years?

Yes, the Harapan 2.0 government cannot afford to have Umno walk out on it like what Bersatu did to Harapan 1.0. Instead of filling the vacuum left by Umno, Borneo parties may even join the bandwagon.

To avoid this, Anwar needs to do three things.

First, Harapan must hold on to the support of middle Malaysia by delivering on governance and reforms and responding aptly to any crisis. When the government is popular, no party would want to leave and be defeated as its opponent in an election.

Conversely, if the government becomes unpopular, staying out will be a good damage control measure for some government parties.

Second, Harapan must enter formal coalition agreements – a multilateral one or many bilateral ones - with not just Umno, but also GPS, GRS, Warisan and all other partners, which should be deposited in Parliament as was done with the memorandum of understanding between the Ismail Sabri Yaakob government and Harapan.

(For examples of coalition agreements, McGuinness Institute has a complete collection of those in New Zealand.)

This would bind Umno and further strengthen the new constitutional convention that post-election coalition government is formed via inter-party negotiation, and not through collections of statutory declarations. This is the best bet for Harapan rather than counting on Zahid’s re-election as party president.

Third and the most challenging task, Harapan must make it a good deal for Umno to stay in the coalition government for five years, instead of joining PAS and Bersatu as junior partners or forcing a snap election.

This requires a genuine commitment to help Umno rebuild its brand as Harapan’s friendly competitor. If Umno is absorbed as the Malay-nationalist party in Harapan – Bersatu’s old role in Harapan 1.0, then Harapan and Umno may suffer from one of the two unintended consequences:

1. Umno has to underline its Malay-Muslim nationalist credential by clashing with DAP and PKR within the enlarged Harapan; or

2. PN easily monopolises the Malay-Muslim nationalist market as Umno loses its identity vis-à-vis Harapan.

The only viable way out for Umno might be a technocratic reinvention so that it can regain its conservative base and compete against both PN and Harapan.

As long as Umno sees a higher chance of winning back 27 seats lost to PAS and Bersatu than that of wresting 18 seats from PKR and Amanah, no new Umno leadership would want to leave Harapan early. This is simply realism at work.

Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan

And if the Umno party election can be fought on how Umno should carve out a distinct identity while staying on in the Harapan government, the new government is safe.

However, if it descends into a proxy fight between pro-Harapan and pro-PN factions, the pro-Harapan faction may just go down with Zahid, which is widely blamed by the Umno grassroots.

It is silly to think that Umno deputy president Mohamad Hasan should not be made DPM because he did not side with Harapan in the government formation struggle. If he is made DPM and that keeps him powerful in Umno and the party hopeful in GE16, he would keep Umno in the new government for as long as it needs. - Mkini

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WONG CHIN HUAT is an Essex-trained political scientist at Sunway University. He is a professor at the university’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Asia. Mindful of humans’ self-interest motivation while pursuing a better world, he is a principled opportunist.

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