Anwar digs himself into another sinking feeling
Azmi Anshar, NST
DATUK Seri Anwar Ibrahim might be anxiously fretting that the ground beneath his feet is sinking again, only that the déjà vu the opposition leader and unelected PKR supremo is experiencing is no paranoia.
The ground is indeed falling as fast as the Rawang sinkholes when swallets horrendously appeared, sometimes caving inside living rooms or kitchen floors of horrified villagers.
Anwar could empathise with the Rawang sinkholes, given the metaphoric holes he excavated for himself since he went rogue on Sept 3, 1998.
Don’t remind or mention the month of September to Anwar: appalling stuff happened, either those subjected to him or those he subjected people to in his outlandish bid to claw out of the chasm he burrowed to make himself relevant.
Here are sordid samples why September commemorates a nightmare for Anwar:
SEPT 2, 1998: His dishonourable sacking as deputy prime minister in the day and expulsion from Umno later that night. Why he was sacked on both counts can be turn into a 10-part political TV melodrama, ramifications that forced a generational schism for 16 years;
SEPT 20, 1998: His first police arrest after arousing illegal street demonstrations to vent anger against his sacking. Anwar was charged with corruption for interfering with police investigations that included forcing a complainant to recant her story that he gambolled in sexual misconduct;
SEPT 16, 2008: He bragged one hoary claim after another that enough Barisan Nasional members of parliament were defecting to the opposition to topple the BN government in what is now a dud, a “wag-the-dog” histrionics to mask his arrest for a second sodomy charge that year.
The Sept 16 complot is a historic hoot: it failed then, it will fail now, just when Anwar possesses better numbers to play around with, which proves that after six years, it is another dreadful tune in his notorious hit parade.
Now here comes another nightmarish September moment for Anwar: Sept 3.
This one looms on Wednesday, the deadline decreed by the sultan of Selangor to PKR, DAP and Pas to nominate three names each to replace, as menteri besar, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, still defying gravity after his questionable sacking as PKR member that underhandedly cast him as a pariah by axis hardliners.
Certainly, it wasn’t intended that when the bigheaded PKR geniuses who engineered the Kajang Move to boorishly replace Khalid with Anwar, the crunch would arrive damningly on a September day.
Still, it’s creepy that major Anwar gambits get foiled in the 11th hour: his Kajang by-election candidature scratched after the prosecution won their appeal to overturn his Sodomy II acquittal and before that, the sacking, the Sept 16 damp squib and the GE13 defeat that presented probably his last shot at the premiership despite boasting a tweet on polling day that he had won.
Now, the sinkhole is set to reappear, again tantalisingly at the 11th hour this Wednesday when Pas makes or breaks the axis’ alliance by navigating itself into a Catch-22 situation.
If Pas presents three nominees as decreed by the sultan of Selangor, the Islamist party shreds the so-called axis consensus of fielding only Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail as the sole nominee.
If Pas embraces the axis’ single nominee, it licks back its own spittle, forced to endorse Dr Wan Azizah’s nomination but worse, disobeying the Selangor ruler’s decree, a no-no for Pas because of its loyalty to His Highness.
However, reading into Pas’ simmering resentment against its PKR and DAP allies, it appears wilfully ready to break ranks for three reasons:
PAS balks at the nepotistic nature of Dr Wan Azizah’s nomination, “remote controlled” by Anwar, as one report goes;
PAS is sick and tired of years of being undermined in major policies, especially those that affect its Islamic precepts; and
PAS fears that the collaborative years were analogous to having ditched its akidah, the Islamic article of faith, which warns of divine retribution in the afterlife.
If Pas resorts to the three-nominee decree, Anwar is as good as finished in Selangor, realising too well that the sultan of Selangor, who has refused to even consider Dr Wan Azizah, will appoint the third (or fourth) nominee that is not named after his wife or his bolshie loyalist, Azmin Ali.
Even if the situation warrants a snap state election (which everyone seems to dread) where the axis retains power, the same obstinate scenario will replay where Anwar won’t relent while the sultan acts within his constitutional supremacy.
The delicious poser is, will Anwar go ballistic against the sultan of Selangor by unleashing his retaliatory arsenal of street demonstrations, social media assaults and other protests of insolence that reprises his vengeance against various Federal Government leaders in the past 16 years?
