PM 10 Needs An Extra Ten Yen For His Tenure

Some peace at last for our prime minister Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Parliament will convene soon as he has conclusively secured the broad agreement of a significant number of likeminded political allies to achieve a secure, stable and sustainable unity government.

There was an unstated but clear choice between supporting DSAI and enabling a continuation of a secular system of government where the country could walk tall. The other abominable alternative was to fall prey to a degenerate, dangerous and tortuous path to a form of Taliban rule. It would seem for that reason an overwhelming majority of recently elected MPs opted to reject cooperation with PAS in favour of the more moderate Malaysian way of living in harmony within a peaceful plural society.

The country has had nine peninsular Malays serving as prime minister under 15 different kings. Only one king, Sultan Abdul Halim Shah of Kedah had two full terms while three sovereigns died in office. The ninth person to hold the office, PMX , Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim(DSAI) is effectively given ten Japanese yen plus ten Korean won, after 41 years of our Look East Policy, to lead, administer and put the country on a proper footing, economically, politically and socially. PMX is required to service the nation’s highest ever debt exceeding RM1 trillion, work towards achieving some equilibrium and food security and undo the Malaysia Boleh euphoria and damage done by the blatant brainwashing and bias built into our system of governance for four decades. Whatever DSAI does the country will still need years, perhaps decades, to recoup and recover.

The office of the prime minister that DSAI has inherited is a blemished, battered and diminished one. It no longer carries the established strong powerful aura and the esteemed position that Dr Mahathir Mohamad inherited in 1981 and insidiously inflated in his 22-year first term.

DSAI must realise that the luxury of the kind of ego and personality-driven esoteric experimentation that was indulged in by Dr Mahathir with public funds is not available to him. It is not quite 1985 but more an Orwellian 1984 where both Big Brother as well the social media have such a predatory and watchful eye on Malaysian leaders.

Any misunderstood manoeuvre, misstep or mistake by a prime minister will easily get magnified, or misinterpreted, and is likely to backfire and jeopardise and undermine his efforts in totally unrelated areas. If a Bentley, BMW or Bufori is bought for his use it becomes the subject of dissection, debate and discussion.

DSAI succeeded two odd men who, in the ordinary course of events, should not have got anywhere near the job. Both Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Dato Sri Ismail Sabri Yaakob were lacklustre, had disturbing demerits and were not in the mould of prime ministerial material. Muhyiddin was a disgruntled defector while Ismail Sabri was simply derelict. They were a disgrace to that office, especially Muhyiddin who used the position to declare an Emergency and stay in power.

It was a superfluous Emergency he persisted on securing even after the initial Royal rebuff. He wanted the office with all the extraordinary powers, wanted a lockdown which he managed to impose and wanted a blank cheque to defray the cost of his plans to lift the country out of the Covid-19 pandemic. He failed in that objective but succeeded unfortunately in getting as many Malaysian households as possible to raise white flags to register their penurious plight.

The chap who succeeded him, Ismail Sabri was a third tier leader of a political party who was deficient in his command of English although he fastidiously flaunted his English Burberry Basingstoke-origin brand.

With such immediate predecessors DSAI did not inherit a healthy ship of state. It was a poisoned chalice that he has received. And the three men who held that same prime ministerial office before these two were also not outstanding or Olympian in the sense of being extraordinarily perceptive or exceptional in moving the country to reach a powerful or superlative stellar position. One of them is incarcerated and has yet to pay the RM210 million fine that was imposed for his misconduct . Another one, a nonagenarian, in spite of clinging on to the prime minister’s post for almost a quarter of a century persisted in the belief he would get another chance.

With this kind of likely competitors or rivals for the prime ministerial office and the catastrophic consequences of their combined blinkered leadership over most of the past 41 years Anwar faces a bleak situation. A Brutus seems a far more likely possibility than blind benign following that is characteristic of the earlier phase of normal Malay politics.

Rainmakers Needed

Malaysia essentially had not fostered a strong resourceful rainmakers’ culture but more a dominant rentier’s economy. Franchises, monopolies, absolute peninsular Malay administrative and regulatory control and the route of privatisation were meant to create Malay billionaires but such Malay billionaires are rare and remarkably few. Without the state’s patronage and protection they would be a greatly endangered breed as they were weaned to a dependence on sweetheart deals, negotiated contracts and the liberal grants of land, loans, leases, licences and other kinds of leeway.

But far more serious than the economic and governance challenges confronting Malaysia is the threat of racial and racial extremism incubated and fanned largely by the country’s longest serving prime minister. At some stage Dr Mahathir decided the country was an Islamic State and he declared it such. Two decades after that startling delusional declaration the dichotomy between the declaration and the deed is becoming dangerously close or real. PAS, the extremist Islamic party led by Tan Sri Haji Abdul Hadi Awang is effectively solely in charge of four northern states of the peninsula. PAS formed a coalition with Bersatu and performed better than ever in the last general election held on November 19 and has now indirect control of almost a third of the House of Representatives.

Hadi, like his coalition partner, Tan Sri Haji Muhyiddin Mohd Yassin is no Cardinal Richelieu or Cardinal Sin. Those cardinals were able to put their nations above their religion. Both Hadi and Muhyiddin don’t have or show that kind of enlightenment. Muhyiddin is clearly and identifiably a self declared Malay first while Hadi is a dogmatic Muslim of a peculiarly provincial kind. The two of them have become serious contenders for national leadership because they seem to have the funds and the fit, foul and forceful way of having their way. Their latest diehard recruit is Dato Seri Ronald Kiandee, a Member of Parliament from Sabah. Sabah is the state where the religious demography was altered radically and significantly by Dr Mahathir. In 1960 Sabah’s population was 454,000 and currently it is just under 4 million.

Malaysia’s(excluding Singapore) population was 7.5 million in 1960 while it is an estimated 33 million today. Sabah’s population was altered largely, it would seem , by Dr Mahathir who enhanced the Muslim component from 37.9 percent in 1960 to about 60 percent in 2021. Was such diabolical demographic re-engineering desirable.

Ronald Kiandee seems to miss this point of the disturbance of the natural healthy harmonious balance that Sabah had, to its benefit from the 1960s to the 1980s.

In this regard both Muhyiddin and Kiandee largely on account of their own obsessive blinkered ambition are willing to be the tools or the means for the attainment of federal power by PAS.

The worst possible scenario for Malaysia, as an integral and peaceful part of a decent, diverse , dynamic and well interconnected Southeast Asian region is to sink from being a feisty democracy under a secular system of government to a desolate pseudo-democracy under punitive theocratic rule. It would be a tragic outcome for the country’s harmonious plural society as further division, discord and dissension will take hold. A country that resembles Afghanistan or Iran, run along draconian dogmatic lines, would be a retrogressive misfit in the region. Dr Mahathir’s Islamic State salvo has obviously misfired and has meandered along to result in this awkward and unpalatable situation. Further the education system and ethical foundations built so solidly by his three predecessors were also destroyed. From Tun Hussein Onn in July 1981 Dr Mahathir inherited a state with financial stability and a first-rate bureaucracy but all of these strengths were destined to evaporate gradually with identity politics, elements of ethnic and religious bias and Dr Mahathir’s pet hates and likes influencing state policy. He said Malaysia would need a 70 million population by the year 2100 to achieve economic gravitas when he could not effectively manage, provide adequately for and educate and train a 25 million population in a nation blessed with abundant human and natural resources.

Anwar has not the time or the luxury to dwell on these sorts of daydreaming with Vision 2020 or the production of flying vehicles or have aspirations for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has to be down to earth, digest an unpalatable inheritance and instil calm, law and order. He has to rebuild and restore confidence in a majestic Malaysia.

In the following piece let us reflect on the parlous and pathetic bureaucracy he has to live and work with.

M Santhananaban

December 18, 2022