Anwar’s Malay Gordian knot

 

“You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission.”

- Flannery O'Connor

Anwar Ibrahim does not have a Malay dilemma as he does a Malay Gordian knot. As for middle-ground politics like everywhere else, it is the dissonance expressed through the ballot box between urban and rural expectations and the electoral gerrymandering that allows, in most cases, an unequal distribution of electoral power.

The Malay Gordian knot is not what every Malaysian prime minister faces. Only Anwar because he leads a supposedly multi-racial party and has to rely on non-Malay support.

The rest of the Malay uber alles crowd never had this dilemma, much less the Gordian knot, because everything they did was supposedly for race and religion when the reality was that they were stuffing their mouths from the gravy train.

Because we have a virulent racial and religious opposition, it does not matter what Anwar does for the Malays because the opposition will tear into him even if his policies benefit the majority or mitigate the damage these extremists do.

The Gordian knot means pandering to racial and religious dogma even though policies which would actually recalibrate this nation away from the path it is heading would benefit the majority.

It also means disenfranchising the people who voted for Pakatan Harapan or asking them to sublimate their expectations, even when it comes to policies and agendas which would do more harm than good. All for the unequal Malay vote that the old maverick is deathly afraid this unity government would rectify.

Can this unity government work with the opposition? Keep in mind that working with the opposition is a new paradigm.

The Malay uber alles establishment never bothered to work with the opposition and the so-called middle ground base of Malay voters could not be bothered.

Now, of course with the DAP in government, no matter how subservient and silent or how hard-working and honest, this does not matter to the people who would vote in a religious extremist coalition. Their very presence is a cause for alarm. Can you imagine that?

Honestly, everything this unity government does is for the Malays. Right now opposition states are getting major flood relief money and yes, this is the right thing to do.

Economic policies are predicated on the disenfranchised and middle class of the Malay community. Subsidies and various entitlement programmes have been beefed up because they benefit the majority polity.

So when it comes to giving cash to politicians to supposedly help the community, what we are really talking about is, giving money to political operatives.

Let us be clear, the federal government, this unity government is already bending over backwards for people in states that Harapan or Umno did not carry.

Indeed voters who voted for Perikatan Nasional are more than happy that the religious and fascist agenda of PN be applied to all and would most probably think that it is haram to provide equal allocation for infidel opposition leaders if their leaders were in the government.

So, when it comes to equal allocations, I have to say I agree with Nazri Abdul Aziz who said this: “If the government gives RM1 million, they will still get RM1 million, but we must ensure how they spend it would not give them any political advantage, to the extent that we do not know where the money allocated goes.

“Because we have to be careful, they might use the money for political purposes.”

Former Umno MP Nazri Abdul Aziz is now Ambassador to the United States

So yes, fund the opposition but make sure transparency is the name of the game. And yes, Nazri is also right when he said that this way, the federal government can draw the opposition into a discussion.

But the opposition does not want to have a discussion. Discussion is anathema to their way of doing things. What does the opposition do? At every turn, they attempt to destabilise the government.

Mainstream political dogma

Mind you if they were doing it on policy grounds and they were pointing out flaws in the policy implementation, then this would be fair game.

However, what the opposition is doing is ratcheting up racial and religious anxieties. What they are doing is demonising non-Malay/non-Muslim communities and they are doing this with mainstream political dogma, which nobody, certainly not the Malay components of Harapan, wants to engage with directly.

Indeed, what PN does not want people who voted for them to understand, is that this unity government was sanctioned by the establishment because they understood that the racial and religious agenda of PN was not only detrimental to the country but also to institutions that for so long Umno propagandists pummeled into the heads of the majority polity, needed to be defended at all costs.

Let me be very clear, there is nothing that Anwar can do which would satisfy this opposition. An opposition led by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, who believes that the non-Muslims in this country should be the pak turut.

Now of course Hadi is aligning with Dr Mahathir Mohamad who is equally disdainful publically of the Malay race and the architect of this Gordian knot.

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Keep in mind that when he was heading Harapan, the old maverick and his allies claimed he was needed to woo the unequal rural votes.

All this is a matter of public record. Add to that his Malay-based party – Bersatu – was even touted as better than Umno because as reported in the press, “Lim (Kit Siang) contended that Bersatu was still more Malaysian than Umno, as the former wants Malays to unite and work with other citizens, while the latter wants Malaysians to remain Malays, Chinese and Indians and is even trying to polarise the next elections as a battle between the Malays and Chinese.”

Mahathir has publicly admitted that the Malays are complacent and that the Chinese are discriminated against in this country. Do not worry, nobody pays much attention to the Indians.

"What else (can I do)... I have tried to be an example, tried to teach, scolded, cried and even prayed. "(But) I have failed. I have failed to achieve the most important thing - how to change the Malays.

"The Chinese in Malaysia have no special rights, they experience discrimination. But they are more successful than us," Mahathir had said.

Forget about the middle ground. What the people should be asking is this: Is there a certain percentage of Malay voters who can cut through PN propaganda and realise that what Anwar is doing for the Malays is better and maybe more transparent than what these Malay uber alles political operatives say they do but fail miserably at?

That is the realpolitik of it. This is not the middle ground. This is not about egalitarian policies or progressive ideals.

This is about a certain section of the Malay community who believe in racial and religious superiority but who have not totally bought into the idea that they would be better off under PN for economic reasons.

Keep in mind that Anwar also was part of tying this Gordian knot.

And how does one solve the problem of a Gordian knot?

There is no Malay political operative who has the cajones to carry out that solution. - 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.