Will the Anwar-Azmin rift result in PKR Baru and replacing UMNO Baru in a new Malaysian political landscape?

Umar Mukhtar

The toddlers of kindergartens and primary schools during the Reformasi era will be eligible to vote in PRU14 in 2018. They don’t give a fart about Anwar Ibrahim or Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. These characters are not the baggage of their making or the permanent theatrical fixtures of their world; a world of competitive excellence that does not need ancient melodramas to weigh them down.

The Anwar-Azmin rift is a necessary legacy to transit into their political world. The said rift has not broken into a full frontal one yet because both sides are still unsure whether PKR’s grassroots are now in the majority made up of aging Anwarinas or disillusioned reformists. They don’t know because PKR is not in a habit of doing its homework diligently. Once they found out whichever way, a full-blown war will break up because both sides want to lay claim to the party.

This is because PKR is a party of the future Malaysia. That was why it was founded. Not because of Anwar was being persecuted by a megalomaniac, it was just sequential to it. Anwar later hijacked it as his personal political vehicle because he thought that Malaysians owe him. And that’s only after he was rejected by his old party, UMNO, which he had courted briefly after his release from prison the first time. By PRU12 voters had shown their disdain for the archaic ruling government, with Anwar in the midst of it.

Anwar took full credit for the electoral uprising as if he was the people’s saviour. But it was a people’s revolution whose time has come. In the excitement, Anwar lost the plot because of his need so badly to be prime minister. Now that he has been put away, without his superficial gloss and false promises, the truths about the old rivalries endemic of an archaic political configuration must necessarily resurface. And the whole nation now seems stuck in the mud of a political quagmire of misplaced loyalties.

We need to move on and the removal of the old cocks is a necessary cleansing towards that end. The new generation of voters owes it to no one but themselves that these ghosts and carriers of old prejudices, fears and myopia are laid to rest. The embarrassed UMNO members who had dutifully stood by their leader until a ‘snapshot’ of their leader’s hand in the cookie jar appears, will soon be looking for a sanctuary from the continuing bombardment of bullshit by leaders of that same genre.

PKR will be the first party to do that house-cleaning. Azmin may not be the most ideal person to herald in a new era but he does have the consummate political skills to negotiate through the minefields left behind by the unactualised dynastic despots. He may not be the best specimen of a totally new generation of leaders but he is eminently qualified to bridge the way.

Why not UMNO, or PAS or DAP as the trailblazers, you might ask. Here’s why.

UMNO had decades to reinvent itself and it has shown that it is unable to. This is because the people who hold the steering wheel at UMNO at present are the material beneficiaries of a system that abhors changes, lest the spoils of war have to be shared equitably. So they stick to old strategies and old arguments that mostly magnify the bogeymen and try to appeal to the electorate’s sense of gratitude. As if what they had paved had no potholes and has a logical destination.

DAP had not sounded any different from half a century ago. That’s probably because it is led by the same jokers all that time. Born as a pressure group, it has not grown beyond being a gangling adolescent. It never intends to grow up, anyway. As a minority-based party pregnant with parochial sentiments in order to survive, DAP finds it difficult to shed those sentiments in favour of a genuinely multiracial perspective in governance. Hence the failures of Pakatan Rakyat, etc. But DAP can remain to be DAP for as long as DAP remains a loyal opposition.

PAS just only went through a metamorphosis from a nationalist party to an Islamist one. It has lost its way as a result of the constant grappling with the contradictions between existing in a secular system and preaching divinity that invalidates that existence. There must be a solution somewhere but definitely it is not to be elucidated by the current crop of neither theologians nor politicians masquerading as know-alls who are leading the party. Let not the new generation be led by the lost.

So let PKR pick up the mantle. The good thing about a party that is about only one man is that when that one man is out of the way, this party with the right multiracial structure is free to re-invent itself as decided by the new generation. There are plenty of budding leaders among them.

The reason we always worry about who is to lead after prime minister Najib Razak is because the political environment has been shaped in the mould that only his type can fit. Now it is open. The bridging will be by Azmin, Saifuddin Abdullah, Rafizi Ramli and even Nurul Izzah Anwar if she ever gets out of her father’s overpowering and suffocating stranglehold.

Let the young change that mould. Let the new Tunku Abdul Rahmans, Razak Husseins, the new Tan Cheng Locks, the new Sambanthans and the new Lim Chong Eus come forward after the Malaysia we had dreamt of is wrecked by the self-serving Mahathir, Tan Koon Swans, the Samy Vellus and the wimpish Koh Tsu Koons who came after these good people. Let those who recognise political realities of a multiracial Malaysia champion the aspirations of a new generation without being inhibited by old taboos and fiction.

The new Lim Kit Siangs and the new TG Hadi Awangs can stay on to perform the functions of barking dogs to keep mainstream politicians honest. But never more than that. This is a multiracial and multi-religious Malaysia and that’s the only way to go. The new generation will be struggling to get by with less than what we had, so they will appreciate more of the little things that make this country a country to die for and not to oppress for.

The UMNO elite children with RM40,000 watches and million-ringgit exotic cars will defend their benefactor but their numbers are thinning. The racists and the religious extremists will also sense a new tide of change but this minority can remain where they are. This is a democracy. The distribution bell curves always favour those who accommodate and not be judgemental of others who are supposedly less aware than them. To each his own.

So hurry up Azmin, be inclusive and with a little tip from your ‘bapa angkat’ on how to do it, let’s go for the creation of PKR Baru, then replace UMNO Baru as the party of choice of a new generation of Malaysians who are proud of all that are common between them and unafraid of the differences between them. Let’s give them a chance to grow and have families with the confidence that this god-given land is for all of them to cherish and safeguard for those who will come after them.