In this Game of Thrones (UPDATED with Chinese Translation)

ARCHIVES 2013

By MT Webmaster On Apr 26, 2013

I am no longer looking at the 13th General Election. I am looking at the post-GE period and the 14th General Election. And I am worrying about how the game in this Game of Thrones is going to be played in the period between the 13th and the 14th General Elections. The 13th General Election is not the end of our problems. It is only the beginning.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Many of you are still entry-level ‘politicians’. From your comments it can be seen that you are political novices, and armchair political ‘analysts’ on top of that. Many of you probably became politically active or politically conscious only in 2007 or 2008.

Many of you look at the 13th General Election on 5th May 2013 as a contest between Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional or a contest to choose the next Prime Minister — Najib Tun Razak or Anwar Ibrahim.

You probably never even heard of the names of the various game-changers in this Game of Thrones. And, yes, this is what it is: a Game of Thrones. And the game-changers may not necessarily be those 2,000 or so candidates who are contesting the general election.

For example, Abraham Lincoln was definitely a game-changer but John Wilkes Booth was an even bigger game-changer. John F. Kennedy was yet another game-changer but Lee Harvey Oswald was an even bigger game-changer (unless the conspiracy theorists are correct).

How many of you novices know or remember names such as Daud Samad, Lorrain Esme Osman, Jalil Ibrahim, Ibrahim Fikri, Asri Muda, Rahim Bakar, Onn Jaafar, Ghazali Shafie, Hussein Ahmad, Mohamed Yaacob, Nik Hassan Abdul Rahman, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and many more? (You probably would have heard of Onn Jaafar and Tengku Razaleigh).

Who is Nik Hassan and what is so significant about him and why is he a game-changer? Nik Hassan was the Menteri Besar of Terengganu who went into conflict with the Terengganu Sultan and was eventually forced to retire and hand the ‘throne’ to Wan Mokhtar Ahmad. And Wan Mokhtar was the Menteri Besar who agreed to the 5% oil royalty for Terengganu and eventually Sabah and Sarawak too were subjected to the same terms.

Hence Nik Hassan ‘created’ Wan Mokhtar. In fact, Wan Mokhtar was Nik Hassan’s handpicked successor who eventually ‘betrayed’ the state by agreeing to the 5% royalty. Therefore, Nik Hassan was the game-changer and if he had not gone into conflict with the Sultan and was not forced to hand over the reins of the state, Tun Razak Hussein could not have twisted Terengganu’s arm to accept 5% (mainly because Nik Hassan was a fighter and if you dare challenge the Sultan then you are definitely a fighter).

Okay, many of you may disagree with me about Tengku Razaleigh. You may not think of him as a game-changer. But I do. And I think so not because I think he is Prime Minister material but because he was the man who pressured Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad into accepting Anwar Ibrahim into Umno.

Dr Mahathir did not agree to this but eventually, because of Tengku Razaleigh’s persistence, he relented. Hence, if not because of Tengku Razaleigh, Anwar would have become the President of PAS, as what Fadzil Noor had wanted, instead of the Deputy President of Umno. And, today, PKR plus Pakatan Rakyat would not exist and PAS and DAP would be two separate opposition parties of no threat to Barisan Nasional (because there would not have been any political crisis in 1998 where Anwar was ousted from Umno).

Lorrain Esme Osman was the man in the centre of the BMF controversy that implicated Tengku Razaleigh. The BMF crisis more or less messed up Tengku Razaleigh’s chances of taking over the Presidency of Umno in 1987. Many of the Umno delegates believed that Tengku Razaleigh was somehow involved in the BMF affair. And Jalil Ibrahim’s murder in Hong Kong angered enough Malays to vote against Tengku Razaleigh (although there were allegations of fraud as well).

Anyway, those are just some examples of how fate decides who becomes the game-changer and the game-changers are not necessarily those who sit on the throne but those who decide or influence who gets to sit on the throne.

The 13th General Election on 5th May 2013 is more or a less already a fait accompli or foregone conclusion. Those in the corridors of power already know who is going to form the government on 6th May 2013 and who is going to be the Prime Minister.

What we are currently seeing are the games they are playing — a show of strength to con the voters and, hopefully, sway the last few stragglers or fence sitters. To most of us, the committed, we have already made up our minds and there is very little they can say or do to change that.

MCA, MIC and Gerakan, who collectively won 20 seats in 2008, are going to get wiped out. MCA may be down to six or seven seats with zero for MIC and Gerakan. East Malaysia, which saw 54 seats going to Barisan Nasional in 2008, may see only 35-40 seats going to the ruling party this time around.

Hence Umno needs to grab some ‘Malay’ seats from PKR and PAS if they want to remain in power. And to do this Umno has to increase the Malay popular vote from 51% in the last election to as close to 60% as it can get this time around, maybe 54-56%. If not then Umno and Barisan Nasional are doomed.

Anwar cannot form the federal government just by winning seats in the general election. Anwar can only do it if he can convince 15 to 25 Barisan Nasional (and/or independent) Members of Parliament to cross over AFTER the general election.

There are four states that are critical to whoever wants to win the general election. These states will give you the federal government and these states are Perak, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak. These four states control 106 of the 222 seats in Parliament, almost half. Hence Barisan Nasional needs to retain these four states, and at a large majority on top of that, if they want to stay in power.

So that is Umno’s and Barisan Nasional’s ‘Waterloo’ — Perak, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak.

Most of you are still focused on winning the general election or concerned about who is going to win the general election in slightly over a week’s time. That is the novice’s way of looking at things. It is actually too late to worry about that. That should have been our worry up to last year.

What we need to worry about now is post-GE. What is going to happen post-GE? In other words, how is the Game of Thrones going to be played? And how will this determine the outcome of the 14th General Election in four or five years from now?

Remember one thing: Malaysian politics is the politics of winner takes all and loser loses all. What we need to know is not who the winners and losers are going to be on 5th May 2013 but in what way we, the voters/rakyat, are going to win or lose post-GE.

We can’t change the present. But we can change the future. And the future is the post-GE period and how this period is going to determine what happens in the 14th General Election. After all, we are not a player in this Game of Thrones. But we can certainly be the game-changer.

Remember one more thing. There is no such thing as a good government, never mind which government you choose. All governments are bad. And the longer they remain in power the worse they become (as Barisan Nasional and many other governments all over the world that have been in power for too long have proven). The only thing is how do we prevent the bad government from being bad?

That is what you and I must now concentrate on.

***************************************

在这个王位争夺游戏里

我不再为第13届大选来伤脑筋了。我注重的是大选后会发生的事情和第14届大选。我为第14届大选前王位争夺游戏的新玩法感到担心。第13届大选并不是问题的终结而是问题的开始。

原文：Raja Petra Kamarudin

译文：方宙

你们当中很多都是刚入门的‘政客’。从你们的留言中就看得出来，而你们那站着说话不腰疼的‘政治分析’更出卖了你们的身份。你们都是在2007/08年才开始接触政治的。

你们有很多人都认为5月5的大选就是民联-国阵之争，或者是安华和纳吉的首相之争。

你们很有可能听都没听过以下这些王位争夺游戏的‘游戏更改者’。是的，这是一场王位争夺游戏，而那些游戏更改者并不一定是那2000个大选候选人。

打个比方，林肯是个游戏更改者，但约翰·威尔克斯·布斯是个更大的游戏更改者。肯尼迪也是另一个游戏更改者，但李·哈維·奧斯瓦爾德才是另一是个更大的游戏更改者（除非那些阴谋论支持者都是对的）。

你们这些新手有多少人知道或认识Daud Samad, Lorrain Esme Osman, Jalil Ibrahim, Ibrahim Fikri, Asri Muda, Rahim Bakar, Onn Jaafar, Ghazali Shafie, Hussein Ahmad, Mohamed Yaacob, Nik Hassan Abdul Rahman, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah呢？ (你很有可能听说过Onn Jaafar翁嘉化和Tengku Razaleigh东姑拉沙里)
谁是Nik Hassan，他做过什么很有影响力的事情和为什么他是个游戏更改人呢？Nik Hassan是登嘉楼前州务大臣，他因违抗登州苏丹而被迫退休和把他的‘王位’传给Wan Mokhtar Ahmad。Wan Mokhtar过后答应了只接受联邦政府5%的石油税而最终沙巴和砂劳越也跟随同样的条款。

所以说Nik Hassan‘制造了’Wan Mokhtar。事实上，Wan Mokhtar是Nik Hassan亲选的接班人，而这个接班人最终‘背叛’了整个州属。故此，Nik Hassan是个游戏更改人，如果他没有跑去对抗苏丹而被迫离职的话，那敦拉萨将会很难要求登嘉楼接受5%的石油税（那是因为Nik Hassan本身是个斗争者，如果一个人胆敢和苏丹对着干的话，那他必定是个斗争者）。

好了，你们可能不同意我对东姑拉沙里的看法，你们不认为他是个游戏更改人，但我确实是这样认为的。我并不是因为他是个当首相的材料才这样想，我是因为他成功地说服敦马接受安华才这样讲的。

马哈迪一开始并不同意，但在东姑的坚持下，他最终妥协了。所以说，如果没有了拉沙里，安华现在将会如 Fadzil Noor希望般成为伊斯兰党主席而不是巫统副主席。再者，公正党和民联将不会出现，而伊党和行动党将不会联盟来威胁国阵（安华在1998年被踢出巫统的事情根本就不会发生，所以就会毫无政治危机可言）。

Lorrain Esme Osman是BMF（Bumiputera Malaysia Finance，此译马来西亚土著金融）丑闻的中心人物。BMF或多或少影响了东姑拉沙里在1987年接管巫统主席一职的机会。许多巫统代表都认为东姑拉沙里有份参与在内。而Jalil Ibrahim在香港被谋杀一事更触怒了马来人来推翻东姑拉沙里（虽然说那些指控都是不正确的）。

这些都是一小撮的例子来显示命运是如何决定谁是游戏更改人。很多时候游戏更改人并不是那些掌权的人，而是那些决定或有份影响谁会上位掌权的人。

5月5的大选或多或少已经成为了‘fait accompli’（既成事实）。那些走在权力走廊上的都已经知道谁会在5月6号组织政府和谁会成为首相了。

我们现在看到的只是他们玩的游戏—-一个玩弄选民和忽悠中间选民的游戏。我们当中大多数人都是已经作出决定的了，他们那些人很难能改变我们的想法。

上届大选马华，国大党和民政一共赢得20个席位，但此届大选他们将死得很惨。马华很有可能输剩6，7席，国大党民政将会一席也没有。而东马原有的54个国阵议席将会降到35-40席。

所以说巫统必须从公正党和伊党手中夺得一些‘马来’议席才能继任。从2008年的51%马来票，他们这次必须取得60%，而如今他们只取得了大约54-56%。如果他们拿不到60%的话，那么国阵就‘玩完’了。

而安华单靠大选赢得的议席是不足以组成政府的。他必须得说服15-25个国阵（和独立）议员在大选后跳槽。

有四个州属是此次大选的重要关键，它们就是霹雳，柔佛，沙巴和砂劳越。这四个州属控制了国会里222个席位的106个，大约有一半之多。所以说如果国阵想要继续执政的话他们必须要保有这4个州属的多数席位。

而这就是巫统和国阵的滑铁炉—-霹雳，柔佛，沙巴和砂劳越。

你们很多人还在为谁在一个星期以后会胜出而担心；这是新手们才担心的东西，其实早在1年前你们就该开始担心这个了，而不是到了现在才这样做。

我们现在应该担心的是大选后的事情。大选后会发生什么事呢？换个说法，这个王位争夺游戏会怎样地玩下去呢？而这对4，5年后的第14届大选又有怎样的影响呢？

记住一件事：马来西亚的政治是个胜者为王，败者为寇的政治。我们需要知道的是我们，这个国家的人民，是大选后的输家或赢家，而不是那个政党是大选里的输家或赢家。

我们改变不了现在，但我们改变得了未来。未来是指大选后和第14届大选前所发生的事情。我们不是这个王位争夺游戏的玩家，但我们绝对能够成为这个游戏的游戏更改人。

麻烦你再记住一件事：无论你的选择是什么，这世界里没有所谓的‘好政府’。所有的政府都是烂透的。他们在位越久就烂的越严重（国阵就是个很好的例子）。我们应该怎样做才能确保一个烂政府不变烂呢？

这就是你和我现在必须专注的。