Sanusi: Hadi on steroids

 

From Terence Netto

Hardly a day goes by without Kedah menteri besar Sanusi Nor roiling the political waters with his penchant for controversial statements.

Whether it is demolishing supposedly illegal temples, disallowing a state holiday for a minority religious occasion, jostling for federal permission to build a new and redundant airport, demanding payment from a neighbouring state for water use from a borderline river or cancelling the sovereignty of that same state, Sanusi is controversy writ large.

It is bad enough that PAS supremo Abdul Hadi Awang is often causing storms of his own with public statements that rile the sensitivities of racial and religious groups. However, it appears his surrogate in Alor Setar has no intention of lowering the temperature raised by his boss’ intemperance.

Instead, it seems Sanusi wants to outdo him, with startling claims and demands on behalf of the state he runs.

The more outrageous the better, apparently, with Sanusi looking to build on his reputation as a crowd-pleasing tub-thumper among voters who will soon go to the polls.

The latest instance of Sanusi’s penchant for the inflammatory is his demand that the Federal Constitution – which recognises Penang’s status as a distinct state – be amended to return it to Kedah, its putative owners before the intervention of British colonialists.

From the vantage of the past two centuries’ historical developments, the People’s Republic of China may have a more substantive claim to Taiwan than Sanusi’s Kedah has to Penang.

Sanusi is not really bothered about constitutional proprieties; he’s just seeding the ground for if his party and the Perikatan Nasional coalition it is part of form a supermajority like Barisan Nasional did not so long ago. He is preparing for a future in which some grand rectification of Malaysia’s colonial past will become the basis of a ‘new order’.

Seen from that perspective, Sanusi is no extremist; instead, he is a herald of an inexorably Islamist future.

The recent warning issues by Hadi himself to non-Muslims that they should not cross (as yet undefined) “red lines” when talking about Islam is a harbinger of things to come.

If this is meant as menacing talk from Hadi (and it is), it accounts for the brazenness of his Alor Setar disciple, who has truly become Hadi on steroids. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

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