DAP’s dilemma: damned if you do, damned if you don’t

 If the party leaves the Madani government, it will be raked over the coals, but if it stays and reforms remain lacklustre, it risks paying the price at GE16.

From Terence Netto

DAP is caught in fraught straits: it can leave Anwar Ibrahim’s government and support the prime minister from the outside, thereby evading blame should there be paltry or no reform.

Or it can choose to stay in government and push Anwar to step on the gas and get all, or a substantial part, of the reform programme enacted in the limited time left before GE16.

Either choice is tough as hell.

If DAP opts out of government, the party is sure to be criticised by the usual suspects as an untrustworthy and faithless partner, a fair-weather friend, and not an ally for the trenches.

If, however, it chooses to stay, its attempt to push Anwar on reform is sure to invite flak from essentially the same band of critics who accuse the party of dominating the Madani government and posing a threat to Malay supremacy.

It is a classic case of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

But, frankly, leaving would be the poorer choice.

Sure, the party could deflect responsibility should the pace of reform be as lacklustre as it has been in the last three years and 10 months in government.

Leaving the government would also gratify the party’s hardcore supporters by showing that it has not fully sacrificed its credibility as a force for political and economic reform.

But it is unlikely DAP would improve its prospects in GE16 by choosing to stay on the margins of Madani rule should the latter continue to be lethargic on reform.

Non-Malay voters are generally disenchanted with PH for what they see as a betrayal of their hopes for reform.

A DAP withdrawal to the margins of Madani rule will salvage some credibility for the party among its more ardent supporters, but it will not assuage the sense of disappointment overall.

Having said that, if DAP chooses to stay on, it has little time left to press Anwar to accelerate the reform programme that the party, together with its Pakatan Harapan partners PKR and Amanah, has been striving to realise for the better part of a quarter century.

To PH partners DAP and Amanah, Anwar must now seem like a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma, as Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union.

But, Malaysia’s largely non-Malay reformists, aided by a smattering of Malay sympathisers, have long had little choice when it comes to supporting a suitable Malay leader to spearhead political and economic reform.

Malay leadership is, of course, de rigueur for the success of such a drive.

From Onn Jaafar to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to Anwar, these aspirant reformists have been conflicted individuals. All of them were from Umno.

They could not be from any other party because, in Malay eyes, they would otherwise lack the credibility to attract enough Malay support to complement broad non-Malay endorsement and secure the keys to Putrajaya.

But in breaking away from the mother lode, they seem like inherently constricted individuals, as if the act of political apostacy had saddled them with a burden of quavers.

Recall what Anwar was in the months after assuming the premiership in late 2022: his presence at the conversion ceremony of a Hindu youth to Islam; his egregious response to a student’s question about when meritocracy would become the norm in university admissions; the broad berth he gave Jakim in terms of funding and influence over government policy; his rush to embrace Hamas; and his facile use of the French Revolution’s injudicious haste when fending off public criticism of his own slow pace of reform.

On Sunday, DAP has to take the bit between its teeth to make the choice of staying in government and push a feckless Anwar to get on with the programme of reform.

Anwar cannot kid himself about his prospects of a second term as prime minister.

PH’s, particularly PKR’s, reverses in the Johor and Negri Sembilan state polls indicate that more setbacks are in store.

In the remaining 18 months on the current government’s watch, Madani must transform itself into the coalition of expedited reform such that, even if it does go down to defeat in GE16, it would be an honourable one.

That would be preferable to the reverses suffered in the Sabah election last November and the recent Johor and Negeri Sembilan polls, which may be portents of a finale that Reformasi diehards are loath to imagine. - 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,