Through the backdoor: An anti-Perikatan Nasional view

Through the backdoor: the Perverse Takeover of the Malaysian government: An anti-Perikatan Nasional view

By Dream Onn bin Dare & Don Dat

The dumbness of politics worldwide, in the US, UK, Australia and elsewhere, had been comprehensively overshadowed by the sheer scale and audacity of shenanigans in Malaysia in 2020.

In February and March 2020, Malaysia took the serious business of governing to a whole new dumb and even comedic level when its government went into convulsions, and through the throes of change which could be considered funny, if it wasn’t so tragic for the people of the country.

In a blink of an eye, without any voting by the public, the result of the historic 2018 elections was reversed and an UMNO government “through the backdoor” was reinstated! How could such a tragedy be inflicted on the long-suffering people of Malaysia?

From the very start, it was clear that something momentous and even disastrous was happening. On 24 February 2020, Prime Minister Mahathir shocked the whole country by suddenly resigning.

He was apparently upset that his party, Bersatu, had wanted him to work with the opposition UMNO and PAS. He refused, but instead of standing his ground to fight as any sane person would, he inexplicably threw in the towel and resigned.

And this was supposed to be the wily old man of Malaysian politics who had ruled the country with an iron fist for 22 years during his first term as PM? Had he really aged that much and gone senile?

From a position of strength, the most important position in government of the land, he had sunk to almost an aforethought. He was left with the position of Interim Prime Minister, but this was just a token, and devoid of any real power. As events subsequently showed, when it mattered he could not even get a crucial audience with the constitutional monarch, King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah.

Though he refused to work with UMNO and PAS, it became clear that others in his party Bersatu, including Muhyiddin had no such qualms. By resigning, Mahathir had actually played into their hands and put himself conveniently out of the equation.

But maybe that had been his intention all along. He had been brought into the reformist coalition in 2018 to challenge former PM Najib Razak, but then proceeded to show his true colours, and resisted any reformist stance. In fact, he foolishly recruited many from the UMNO party into his Bersatu party to shore up his numbers. He had invited his own Trojan horses into the coalition.

That was part of the problem – many of these turncoats had no qualms about turning again, and joining Muhyiddin in making common cause with UMNO.

The real mistake was that after the last elections, the Pakatan Harapan government had basically given Mahathir the PM position on a silver platter, with only the tacit understanding that he would make way for PKR chief Anwar Ibrahim in two years’ time. He resisted fixing a proper timeline, and as events subsequently showed, probably he had never ever intended to make way for Anwar at all.

While Mahathir proceeded to shore up the number of Members of Parliament backing him from his weakened position, his perceived rivals former Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin from his own Bersatu Party and PKR President Anwar Ibrahim were also gathering support from the MPs.

Just before the weekend on February 28 Muhyiddin claimed a chuck of supporting MPs, though this appeared to be a little shy of the majority. Basically this would have comprised his group of rebel MPs from Bersatu (19 MPs) and others from a breakaway group in PKR under its deputy president Azmin (11 MPs), deciding to throw their lot with opposition UMNO (39 MPs) and PAS (18 MPs) members. Even with the support of Gabungan Parti Sarawak or GPS with 18 MPs, the total would have come up to only 105 MPs – a little short of the 112 simple majority (out of the total of 222 MPs).

But nobody seemed to have even questioned his numbers. Not least the King, who seemed to have remembered how Mahathir had previously curtailed the powers of the royalty when he was in power in UMNO. He accepted Muhyiddin’s claims, and prepared to appoint him the Prime Minister on 1 March 2020.

To forestall this, Mahathir then suddenly attempted to throw his hat in the ring again and began to fight for the position he had abruptly resigned from, this time joining forces with Anwar. The numbers of MP support being claimed in Malaysian politics could be somewhere ephemeral as we had seen above, but Mahathir went to the king claiming he actually had at least 114 MPs backing him, more than sufficient to give him the majority.

But it was not to be. Too late. The horse has bolted. The King ignored him, and Muhyiddin was appointed Prime Minister on Sunday 1 March 2020. And so, the Pakatan Harapan or “Pact of Hope” alliance lost all hope and went into opposition after just two years in government.

Public anger however grew at the ejection of the reformist alliance, with the hashtag “NotMyPM” trending on Twitter. More than 100,000 people signed a petition that said the move was a ‘betrayal’ of voters’ choice at the 2018 poll.

While former PM Mahathir had hoped to call a motion of confidence on the Muhyiddin government on 9 March 2020 when parliamentary session was originally scheduled to begin to try and erase his fatal mistake, he was stymied when this was pushed back by Muhyiddin to May 18 2020.

The opportunity for a change in government in the short term seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

The writing was on the wall. All the good work done by the Pakatan government appeared to have been unraveled, and the people charged with carrying out the stellar task had been left high and dry.

Within days, attorney general Tommy Thomas who had led the charge in taking action against the former UMNO ministers, including Prime Minister Najib Razak, turned in his resignation. He was closely followed by the Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, Latheefa Koya.

When the corrupt return to power, there was clearly no role for a fearless anti-corruption fighter. The country was back to square one, and that was the place no one wanted to be. The world-reknown kleptocrat and his cronies had come back to power in Malaysia, but only through the back door. Is there no hope for Malaysia?