Move backfires on Anwar

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s bid to make his wife Selangor’s first woman Mentri Besar has started to unravel with the top PAS leadership openly expressing support for Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

Joceline Tan, The Star

DATUK Seri Anwar Ibrahim looked dapper in a grey suit when he stood up to speak at the special parliamentary meeting on Wednesday.

But the Opposition Leader sounded hoarse, as though he had a sore throat. He also seemed rather distracted, as though his mind was somewhere else.

Anwar had every reason for seeming distracted in Parliament that day. He has had a rather gruelling week, politically speaking. He has been working furiously to set the stage for his wife to become the next Mentri Besar of Selangor.

His mind was probably on the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council meeting that same afternoon. PKR had proposed their president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the mentri besar candidate after an intense supreme council meeting on Monday night and Anwar was hoping to get the endorsement from the Pakatan council.

But PAS and DAP claimed they needed to go back to their respective parties for more discussion. PAS was obviously buying time on an awkward decision. PAS leaders in Selangor have openly said they preferred Khalid although DAP does not mind either Dr Wan Azizah or her deputy Azmin Ali.

The two parties promised they would deliver a decision by Aug 10 but PAS president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang may have pre-empted things.

On Friday, after delivering his usual religious lecture at the Rusila Mosque in Terengganu, Hadi told journalists that he wants Khalid to continue as Mentri Besar.

PAS leaders have been against the Kajang Move from the start and they are quite fed-up with the PKR power struggle. Besides, they are more concerned about the Israeli attacks on innocent lives in Gaza than Anwar and his Kajang Move.

The plot to topple Khalid has come at great price to the reputation of PKR and the Pakatan coalition.

Opinion polls showed that public opinion about the Selangor government has gone down. The anti-Khalid gang has been quick to blame Khalid for the erosion in support but the real plunge began after the ill-conceived Kajang Move.

Most Selangorians did not buy the arguments for the Kajang Move because it was so nonsensical. Only the blindly loyal gave it their grudging support.

For instance, one of the arguments claimed that the Kajang Move was needed because Najib was about to be toppled from power and Umno would soon fall to the ultras led by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Once that happened, there would be a fullblown manipulation of racial and religious controversies which only another Mentri Besar like Anwar could handle.

Another argument claimed that the Kajang Move was to make Selangor doubly better so that it could become a showcase for Pakatan and a launchpad to take over Putrajaya.

Nothing of that sort has happened. Najib is in full control of Umno while Selangor has gone from Putrajaya launchpad to a political war zone. Worse, PKR’s standing has been tarnished by a problem-riddled party polls.

The Kajang Move has been an epic disaster.

The PAS stand on the Mentri Besar post is a serious setback for PKR and particularly for Anwar. He seems to have lost that magic touch and his party has lost its hold over the Selangor middle ground.

The Selangor population is quite sophisticated and informed. They supported Pakatan because they thought the coalition would be a more principled and a better government.

Instead, they saw how PKR engineered an unnecessary by-election by forcing a sitting assemblyman to quit. Then they tried to force a popular Mentri Besar to resign for an untested woman.

Dr Wan Azizah has found herself taking one step forward and two steps backwards.

Selangorians are not exactly eager for her to take over. The average Selangorian is still with Khalid, warts and all. He may not be the most fantastic administrator Selangor has ever had but he is certainly the cleanest to date.

There has not been a whiff of financial scandal despite Khalid presiding over the multi-billion ringgit water deal. In contrast, a number of those behind the plot to topple him have already been implicated as having links with a water concessionaire.

Dr Wan Azizah would not have an easy time even if she makes it. She would be taking over from a still popular Mentri Besar. She would not be coming in on a groundswell of goodwill given the questionable methods and arguments used to kick out Khalid.

She would have to hit the ground running because she would be landing smack in a water crisis. The latest reports of record low water levels at the Selangor Dam point to another round of dry taps and hot days that will be far worse than the previous one.

There would not be any honeymoon period and Dr Wan Azizah would be tested the way former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was tested when the worst floods in 100 years hit Bangkok weeks after she came to power. Poor Yingluck was blamed by chauvinistic soothsayers for her “female bad luck”.

Dr Wan Azizah has often been seen as some sort of Corazon Aquino, thrust into national politics because of their husbands. They were able to draw a great deal of public sympathy but everything has a limit.

The days when people would believe anything that Anwar said or did, no matter how outrageous, are coming to an end. He had trouble convincing his own party that his wife was qualified for the Mentri Besar job.

Rift in relations

Anwar had rejected the appeals of Azmin’s supporters to nominate both Azmin and Dr Wan Azizah for the Mentri Besar post. Azmin’s supporters met Anwar on two separate occasions but he could not be persuaded.

The relationship between mentor and mentee has truly broken down although they will probably continue to smile and talk in public.

Azmin now holds the cards in terms of numbers. Those aligned to him dominate the new party leadership line-up – at the vice-presidents level, the Youth and Women wings and the supreme council seats.

This group did not appreciate the tactics used to undermine Azmin during the party election and they are waiting to see what Azmin will do when he returns from Mecca today.

Anwar had the inkling that his wife may face objections and he was preparing a “Plan B” even before Hadi’s devastating statement. He had offered an olive branch to Khalid, telling him that he would help him to continue as Mentri Besar if Khalid got rid of his former political secretary Faekah Husin.

Faekah, who is CEO of Mentri Besar Incorporated, has been a thorn in the side of many PKR politicians but she is a tigress in defending Khalid’s interests.

Apparently, Khalid had merely laughed when told of the request.

Sinar Harian columnist Muhammad Mat Yakim wrote a scorching commentary earlier last week, criticising Anwar for going behind the back of Pakatan to promote his wife.

He accused Anwar of nepotism and said that Rafizi Ramli, the architect of the Kajang Move, imagines he is “so clever”.

“Because of the rivalry in the party, the whole state has been sacrificed, the interests of the people set aside,” said the writer.

Technically speaking, Dr Wan Azizah, being the party president, does have a claim to the Mentri Besar job. But it becomes terrible when the man pushing hardest for her is her own husband. In any other party, it would have been condemned as nepotism.

But nepotism aside, her problem is that few people really believed that she has what it takes for the job. PKR members respect her for having been there for the party when her husband was in prison. But the party is now in power and under pressure to deliver to the expectations of the electorate. Figureheads and token roles are not plausible anymore.

Those arguing her case spoke of how she will be a unifying figure and bring stability to the party. But the Mentri Besar’s job is more than that.

Would she have handled the Bible seizure or “kalimah Allah” issue any differently from the man she tried to topple? Does she have the ability to oversee contentious issues of race and religion?

Would she have been able to take on a power-hungry Umno or the ultras in Perkasa? Would she even have been able to resolve the factions in her own party, given that she has alienated the group aligned to Khalid and angered the group aligned to Azmin?

Most important of all, does she have the enonomic know-how and the managerial skills to administrate a complex and fast-track state like Selangor?

Had the answers to all these questions been a “yes,” no one would have raised the question of nepotism.

It was quite evident that characters such as Rafizi are so keen on her because they want to be the power behind a weak leader. In fact, both the Khalid and Azmin factions have blamed Rafizi for giving Anwar bad advice and damaging the party.

PKR is on a bad momentum at the moment and part of it also has to do with the uncertainty over Anwar’s impending sodomy case.

His devastating court conviction in March coincided with the tragic disappearance of MH370 and now his move to make his wife the Mentri Besar is happening amid the devastation of MH17.

He is not in a good place at the moment and it will get worse if his wife fails to make it as the next Mentri Besar of Selangor.