ANWAR IS LOSING

ANWAR IBRAHIM – A POLITICAL QUEST UPSIDE DOWN


Time is reaching a standstill for Anwar Ibrahim. While the clock has turned back to place him in the dock for sodomy once again, the votes he had drawn from the masses to strike the biggest win in history for the Opposition in Malaysia is dwindling at a rate faster than the slide of Dow Jones in Wall Street.

Anwar is in the dock this time on the reverse side of his attempt to deny Najib Tun Razak the chance to become Prime Minister of Malaysia. But Najib has clinched it.

In the wake of Anwar’s ill-will lies a couple of affidavits, one alleging on hearsay that Najib had serially sodomized the murdered Mongolian woman, Altantuya Sharibuu, and the other appearing as a desperate attempt to send Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, to the gallows.

Najib’s political strategist, Abdul Razak Baginda, since freed of the charge of abetment in the murder, has denied Najib and Rosmah had ever known Altantuya.

Razak lifted from the couple the cloud of suspicion Anwar and his sidekick, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, had conjured, giving the breather Najib needs to move on to his destiny, a chance to do as well as his great father had done for the Malays and for Malaysians.

The result is a certain relief especially among members and supporters of Umno who had voted the Opposition on 8 March 2008. Chinese and Indians are returning to the MCA and MIC too.

Most people answered positively when asked whether Malay voters would choose Umno again as they did between 1999 and 2004.

The pendulum had swung one way and then the other in the aftermath of Anwar’s incarceration following charges of corruption and sodomy.

Asked whether they would support Umno after Abdullah Badawi retires from government, Prof. Dr. Isahak Harun from the Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI), Tanjung Malim, said “possibly”, him wishing the new leader would opt to use the Malay language instead of English to teach Science and Mathematics in schools.

Others contacted were quite unhappy with the government’s failure to foster a viable and sustainable Bumiputra (indigens) Commercial and Industrial Community (BCIC) well into the 9th Malaysia (Fiver-Year) Plan.

Former BERNAMA editor-in-chief, Rahman Sulaiman, said Najib is somewhat injured but Umno members and supporters will have to eventually return home to roost. There’s no where else for them to go.

The real forces behind the “re-conversion” of Malay voters must be the fact some non-Malays among members and supporters of the DAP and Anwar’s own Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) kept bombarding Malays and Islam in a frenzy of race-hate.

In the aftermath of this round of the flame-baiting for the communal votes, DAP’s Senior Selangor State Executive Councillor, Teresa Kok, sued a newspaper for RM30 million and RM100 million for what she construed were defamatory reports and a damaging short-story.

Earlier, a couple of dud Molotov-cocktails were tossed into the compound of her family home, a note attached to warn her and everyone else against playing the role of the enfant terrible in the combustible comedy of errors.

Raja Petra, Anwar’s friend from his school days, in his famous blog, Malaysia Today, slammed the Malays and at Islam for reasons people are still seeking to know. He says he is a Bugis, and not Malay.

The point is, there is nothing anyone can do to change the status of the Malays, of Islam and of the National Language, without summoning a two-third majority in parliament and tossing away the relevant clauses from the Constitution.

As a result of the bad political and social tastes, and for asking Who Are The Malays?, the Malays have after years of patience, suddenly turned around and are asking who had been responsible for giving the non-Malays their status as Malaysian citizens?

The Malay rulers themselves have issued caution. Do not question their sovereignty, nor distress their dignity.

The idea of the aggression was to seek for equality between the races and reject the special status accorded by the Constitution to the Malays and to Islam.

Malays simply have to retaliate. They are openly asking the non-Malays in the Opposition, including Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR, to agree to do away with the Social Contract even if there had, in fact, been one. In other words, they want to go back to before British colonization.

In the wake of the new developments someone quickly wrote to remind the people Anwar had made an agreement with the Pas and the DAP not to question the special privileges of the Malays and the position of Islam.

But what would such an agreement be worth? These matters are already enshrined in the Constitution.

Anwar is still baying for a simple majority he could not produce as promised before 16 September 2008, and now “before December,” which is only several days away.

He ought to be reminded the Opposition merely managed to take about 40 percent of the total Malays votes in the 8 March elections, the largest chunks coming from Kelantan and Kedah states.

Umno, which held onto the remaining 60 percent, can and will regain the lost ground in the next general elections or in a snap-election Najib may choose to call before the end of next year, though probably not as well as it had done in 2004.

Even as Umno is grappling to control “money politics” that’s bedeviling the party’s morale, Anwar, it would seem, has failed to control the emotions of his bedfellows, and is now verging upon political bankruptcy.

The charismatic political maestro, his persona screwed, is closing in on his end……. the sage withered from the lakes and the birds no longer sing. ---a. ghani ismail, 20 November, 2008