When political sweetness turns sour

 

Sweet and sour: (From left) Anwar, Ahmad Zahid, and Muhyiddin – who is most useful to whom? It is anyone’s guess in which direction Malaysia’s sifting political sands will move. — Bernama/The Star

“HABIS manis, sepah dibuang.”

That was DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke’s cryptic Facebook post on Aug 31. It basically means “used and discarded”. Who the Seremban MP was referring to is anybody’s guess. The most popular opinion is that it’s Ong Kian Ming. Loke made the post just hours after Ong quit DAP.

Ong, the former Bangi MP, said he left to honour a personal pledge to campaign for former Health minister Khairy Jamaluddin in the upcoming General Election (GE16), adding that he had no immediate plans to join another political party or contest a seat himself.

A guess that is surely wrong is that this is self-reflection: Umno is the madu that has now turned into sepah for DAP.

More irony. The central PAS muktamar (congress) began on Wednesday in Kota Baru; during a meeting on Friday, Pengkalan Kundor assemblyman Mardhiyah Johari mocked calls from DAP leaders for the Attorney General to review the discontinuation of corruption charges against Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Ahmad Zahid was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal by the Kuala Lumpur High Court following an application from the prosecution on Sept 4, 2023, despite the court having earlier found a prima facie case against him. The move came a little under a year after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition government was formed with the Umno-led Barisan Nasional.

“When they [DAP] wanted to form a government with Umno’s support, this matter did not come up; now they are kalut [flustered]. This is not reform, but hypocrisy,” she said in the debate on PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang’s policy speech.

Today madu, tomorrow sepah is the way of politics, and Malaysian history is littered with examples of indispensable allies swiftly reduced to discarded conveniences the moment power dynamics shift.

Take the aftermath of 2020’s Sheraton Move and the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government, when Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin needed the backing of Umno MPs to cobble together a parliamentary majority. At that moment, Umno’s numbers were the ultimate sweetness required to lock in the premiership. Yet, once securely in power, Muhyiddin sidelined Umno’s top leadership. Ahmad Zahid was left without a Cabinet portfolio, and several Umno MPs who were given ministerial posts chose to pledge personal loyalty to Muhyiddin.

Ahmad Zahid was treated as a disposable stepping stone until he orchestrated his 17-month revenge by pulling away enough MPs to collapse Muhyiddin’s administration.

A similar cycle played out a few years earlier with Tun Dr Maha-thir Mohamad and Pakatan Harapan ahead of the historic 2018 General Election. Pakatan needed a heavy-hitting Malay talisman to crack Umno strongholds, and Dr Mahathir was welcomed with open arms, made prime minister-designate, and treated as the indispensable vehicle to oust Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

But scarcely 22 months into the administration, internal coalition pressures mounted over leadership succession timelines and deep-seated mistrust. The alliance fractured from within, culminating in the Sheraton Move when Dr Mahathir found himself isolated and outmanoeuvred, effectively rendered politically redundant overnight.

We see the same underlying tension today in the unity government. Following the hung parliament of GE15, Anwar needed Barisan’s 30 MPs to form the federal government, rescuing Pakatan from an impasse when they held only 82 seats (ie, Paka-tan 81, Muda one); you need 112 seats to form a government.

Those 30 seats were pure madu.

But state-level electoral maps are shifting today, with Umno increasingly eyeing cooperation with Perikatan Nasional elements or asserting independent dominance, such as in the Johor and Negri Sembilan’s elections, and reportedly making similar plans for upcoming polls in Melaka.

The Pakatan-Barisan partnership is facing immense friction, leaving grassroots elements in both camps wondering when tactical utility will curdle into mutual political discard. The next few months will reveal who becomes madu and who turns to sepah.

Take Bersatu, for instance. It was once the cream of the crop within the Perikatan madu, with Muhyiddin ruling supreme in the alliance. But the party eventually fractured under internal strife between two camps, one loyal to deputy president Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin and the other to Datuk Seri Azmin Ali. When Muhyiddin sided with Azmin and sidelined Hamzah, the sacked deputy president formed Wawa-san, creating a vital bridge between Ahmad Zahid and Abdul Hadi.

Now Bersatu and Muhyiddin have become sepah to PAS and the broader Perikatan bloc. Yet, in a dramatic political twist, Bersatu – which was once part of Pakatan, and which helped bring down the Barisan government and Najib in the 2018 General Election – might find its way back into an alliance with its former partners turned rivals.

Bersatu could well serve as the fresh madu Pakatan needs to win Malay-majority seats. Currently, those voter bases are increasingly dominated by the formidable Umno-PAS/Wawasan jajaran baru (new alignment).

From sepah, DAP might see Bersatu as madu if both parties are on the same side. In politics, yesterday’s discarded remnants can quickly become today’s sweet nectar as desperate alliances make former enemies indispensable once again.

A politician might even post on Facebook: Dulu sepah, kini madu. - Star