The reason why Anwar Ibrahim is a failure
The main point here is Anwar started his political life on the foundation of lies, fake news, rabble-rousing, exploitation, corruption, populism, cultism, etc. There was a total lack of morality and sincerity in everything he did. It was all about himself and how he can personally benefit from all his actions.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Anwar Ibrahim is a failed politician. But this is something he and his admirers cannot understand and cannot accept. Anwar should accept the fact that he has failed and just move on. But he refuses to do so. He thinks he is still the Mandela-Gandhi of Malaysia.
Anwar started his political career in 1974 against the backdrop of rabble-rousing and fake news. This is not a good way to start any career and the 1974 demonstration in Baling and the false allegations that poor farmers were starving to death would have become a non-event had the government not made the mistake of detaining Anwar under the Internal Security Act.
That ISA detention worked in Anwar’s favour. It gave him fame, and on his release from detention he exploited this fame by campaigning on an Islamic platform — a good platform to use if your target audience is farmers, fishermen and rubber tappers.
But Anwar needed an “infrastructure”. So, he rode on PAS for that. PAS organised the rallies and Anwar became their star attraction or VIP speaker (penceramah) at these rallies. Basically, Anwar and PAS used each other.
It was believed at that time that Anwar would join PAS and become the party’s Deputy President, and later its President. But Anwar had other plans. He wanted to become Malaysia’s Prime Minister. And becoming a PAS leader would not help make him the Prime Minister.
So, after six years of using PAS to build up his reputation as a “firebrand” Islamic leader, in 1982 he abandoned his “Islamic cause” and joined Umno.
Before he left PAS and ABIM to join Umno, Anwar gathered his supporters to give his goodbye speech. He explained that Umno is corrupt and un-Islamic, so he needs to join Umno to clean it up from the inside. He was going to transform or reform Umno and this can only be done if he joins Umno and does this internally.
PAS leaders were sceptical. They predicted Anwar would fail to reform Umno and instead Umno would change him. They were right. In a very short time Anwar became more corrupt than the Umno leaders he allegedly was going to change. In fact, Anwar brought money-politics or political corruption to an entirely new level that made even people like Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad shudder.
Yes, if you can shock Mahathir, then you have to be worse than him considering the old man knows no limits and yet considers you as having exceeded this limit.
So that, basically, was the foundation of Anwar’s political career. The rest of the story of what happened after Anwar joined Umno in 1982 is well-documented and most Malaysians already know the story.
The main point here is Anwar started his political life on the foundation of lies, fake news, rabble-rousing, exploitation, corruption, populism, cultism, etc. There was a total lack of morality and sincerity in everything he did. It was all about himself and how he can personally benefit from all his actions.
Such a foundation cannot last because you just cannot sustain a house of cards forever. Anwar has reached the end of the road of his charade. But he cannot accept this. He thinks he can still fool all the people all of the time. And that is what the tragedy called “47 years of the Anwar Ibrahim myth” is all about.
