Nimble footwork, ponderous steps

Different moves: Rafizi (right) has taken quick, decisive steps, representing a new generation of politician while Hamzah is still weighed down by old habits. — Filepics/The Star

GAJAH sama gajah berjuang, kancil mati tersepit di tengah (elephants fight, and mouse deer trapped in the middle die). Is this the fate of Parti Bersama Malaysia, whose logo is a kancil?

The political elephants are Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional, which won 81 and 74 seats respectively in the 15th General Election in 2022 (GE15).

And on Tuesday, the mouse deer made itself known when former PKR deputy president Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli and ex-PKR vice-president Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad officially took over an obscure party, Bersama, which has never contested a national election. Rafizi said his party will contest independently in all major political strongholds, including those of Pakatan, Perikatan, and Barisan Nasional.

Will Bersama be crushed in its fight against the two elephants and Barisan (if Umno decides to go solo) in GE16?

I don’t believe it will. Mainly because Bersama has high-profile former MPs as candidates. They include former Pandan MP Rafizi and former Setiawangsa MP Nik Nazmi. If you include the supportive PKR MPs who attended the big Bersama announcement last Sunday, it also has Subang MP Wong Chen, Petaling Jaya MP Lee Chean Chung, Ampang MP Rodziah Ismail, Sungai Siput MP S. Kesavan, Wangsa Maju MP Zahir Hassan, and Balik Pulau MP Datuk Bakhtiar Wan Chik.

Also, after the Sunday event, numerous PKR grassroots leaders and branch chiefs reportedly resigned, announcing their departure from the party in solidarity with Rafizi and Nik Nazmi.

Bersama seems to be PKR 2.0, a splinter party. It has the feel of PKR when it was just starting in 1999, fighting for reformasi. That massive grassroots movement demanded an end to systemic corruption and a move towards institutional reforms and a complete overhaul of the old gajah establishment.

Arguably, the difference is the sacking and jailing of its founder, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim – not to mention the black eye he infamously received at the time – which served as the movement’s original lightning rod in 1998.

Perhaps Bersama’s fate could be better linked to this other Malay proverb: “Kecil-kecil kancil, lama-lama harimau dijeratnya (as small as a mouse deer is, eventually it traps the tiger)”. No matter how small or physically weak you are, if you possess keen intelligence and patience, you can eventually defeat a much larger, stronger, and more dangerous adversary.

Rafizi and Nik Nazmi’s decision to quit as MPs and then take over an existing party is seen as an intelligent move. They acted swiftly, sacrificing their MP seats and not waiting for GE16 to take the big step. They were “seperti kancil terlepas daripada jerat” (like a mouse deer breaking free from a trap). They were nimble, able to move fast without internal party restrictions holding them down.

Compare that with the moves (open or unseen) of a political elephant, Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin. Bersatu sacked its deputy president in February, and to date, he is partyless and has lost his post as Opposition leader. His partyless status means he and his 18 MPs (current and former Ber-satu members) don’t have a platform on which they can move forward.

The talk is that Hamzah is supposed to take over Berjasa. But Perikatan has not accepted Berjasa’s entry into the opposition coalition. It could be that PAS has failed to convince the three other component parties, especially Bersatu, to take in Berjasa.

Bersatu is led by Tan Sri Muh-yiddin Yassin, who has declared Hamzah an enemy – a sentiment Hamzah directly reciprocated when he defiantly announced he was shifting from Muhyiddin’s No.1 supporter to his No.1 enemy.

Interestingly, soon after a Perikatan meeting to discuss the matter, PAS president Tan Sri Hadi Awang told the media that his party would officially review its relationship with Bersatu because “patience has its limits”, following major disagreements over seat allocations and Ber-satu’s refusal to broaden the coalition.

The kancil is nimble. It can think outside the box. Whereas the gajah is too fond of its titles and MP seats, it’s a slow, ponderous lumberer. Bersama is now dominating the political discourse, while Hamzah’s Reset – which he launched in February, immediately following his expulsion from Bersatu to rally his loyalist MPs – is just a word.

Another Malay proverb comes to mind here: “Semut dipijak tidak mati, gajah diharung bergelimpangan (step on an ant and it doesn’t die, but crash through elephants and they go sprawling). Because the gajah politician is so weighed down by titles, egos, and large factions, when he makes a sudden, uncoordinated move, he lacks agility. He crashes heavily, resulting in a structural mess and chaos (bergelimpangan).

But a word of caution to the kancil who could err on the side of being a bit too smart.

While Rafizi and Bersama currently moving with the agility of a kancil – operating outside the rigid confines of the political establishment – he would do well to remember this proverb: “Kan-cil melupakan jerat, tetapi jerat tidak melupakan kancil (the mouse deer forgets the trap, but the trap never forgets the mouse-deer).”

Right now, Bersama is riding a wave of fresh, unburdened momentum. But the jerat in Malaysian politics – entrenched patronage, deep-pocketed machinery, and the unforgiving reality of first-past-the-post elections – never actually disappears.

The moment the initial excitement fades, and the reality of a brutal, multi-cornered national election sets in, those structural traps could quietly snap shut on the underdogs, no matter how clever or nimble they think they are.

The kancil could still be tersepit (caught in a tight squeeze).