No one can form the new government without frogs
So, let us no longer insult frogs, or call those like Sir Winston Churchill who support the other side as frogs. This is what politics is all about. You support the winner. And Sabah’s Parti Warisan said they will support Anwar if he is the winner and not if he is the loser. And without frogs, how can the loser become the winner? Even Pakatan Harapan needs frogs to win.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
In 1904, Sir Winston Churchill left the Conservative party and joined the Liberal party, after which he won the parliament seat of Manchester North-West. He later went back to the Conservative party and became Britain’s Prime Minister in 1940.
In Malaysia, Churchill would be called a frog (Malaysians are fond of mocking other people and love to call people all sorts of degrading names). Hence the most famous political frog can be said to be Churchill. But then, if not because of Churchill, I would be writing this article in German. Hence not all frogs are worthless.
Malaysia has its share of frogs as well. Onn Jaafar was a frog. Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was a frog — in fact, he was a frog a few times. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was a frog. Anwar Ibrahim was a frog — and Anwar’s last attempt at frogging in 2004 failed when the Umno supreme council rejected his request to re-join Umno (that was when he decided to officially sign up as a PKR member instead).
So there you have it. Not all frogs are bad. Some frogs are good. And two of these frogs — Ku Li and Anwar — are being considered for the job of Malaysia’s PM9.
Anyway, before we can talk about who is going to be appointed PM9, we must first talk about who has enough seats to become PM9. As it stands now, all aspirants for the job of PM9 do not have enough seats to get appointed.
The minimum, of course, is 111 seats — which means the aspirant and 110 other MPs. But 111 is too dicey. One MP strikes out and you will see a hung parliament. Hence 115-120 would be safer and will make the new government more stable.
I mean you can afford to pay RM100 million to buy one or two MPs. But ten MPs will cost too much and will not be easy to achieve. Hence better 115-120 MPs rather than just 111.
Whatever it may be, as I said earlier, no one has the required majority to qualify as PM9 — and for sure no one has 115-120 MPs to give him/her a safe margin. So both sides need frogs to make up the numbers.
Frogs are not free, and neither are they cheap. Some do not need cash, of course. Positions, settling of court cases, and so on, are enough. But you still have to make some sort of deal with these frogs.
So, let us no longer insult frogs, or call those like Sir Winston Churchill who support the other side as frogs. This is what politics is all about. You support the winner. And Sabah’s Parti Warisan said they will support Anwar if he is the winner and not if he is the loser. And without frogs, how can the loser become the winner? Even Pakatan Harapan needs frogs to win.
