Cracks forming in Pakatan over reform promises

DATUK Seri Anwar Ibrahim was in a pleasant mood after performing Friday prayers at the mosque in Kuah, Langkawi, where the sermon dwelled on the threat of TikTok to faith and morals.

It was the first time many locals were seeing the Prime Minister in the flesh and he drew quite a bit of excitement.

All was good until reporters approached to ask about DAP’s push to recognise the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC). There was a flash of annoyance, his tone of voice changed and it was apparent that he regarded it as a red line not to be crossed.

The gist of what he said was that the Malay language is paramount, it is in the country’s constitution and the position of Malay language has to be clear and established before recognising the UEC.

The UEC issue has once again become a flashpoint and Chinese educationists will probably spend the next few weeks trying to decipher what the Prime Minister actually meant.

Recognising the UEC was in the Pakatan manifesto. It has also been recognised by the Sarawak government and soon by the Sabah government.

But the Malay storm against the latest UEC push was so fierce that it would be suicidal for a Malay politician to ignore.

It looks like DAP’s push for the UEC is dead in the water.

Barely 4% of Chinese secondary school students sit for the UEC each year but it has been so politicised over the years that for the Chinese, it became a symbolic battle for equality under the Malaysian sun whereas the Malay right wing saw it as a challenge to the national language.

The last few years have been a lesson for politicians not to make promises they cannot keep and for people not to believe everything that politicians say.

Anwar has actually been quite receptive to DAP’s call to step up reforms and had immediately made a bold decision to exempt SMEs earning less than RM1mil per annum from the e-invoicing policy.

The PKR president is aware that his own party stands to lose most if the Chinese stay home on election day or throw their votes elsewhere.

The repercussions from the Sabah election is still sinking in for all the peninsula-based parties.

Umno lost its deposit in 12 seats and some of the Umno candidates fared worse than independent candidates.

Despite its reputation as "the Prime Minister’s party," PKR won only one seat while its candidates in Moyog and Silam lost their deposits.

The DAP leadership must be credited for finally coming to their senses on promises made to their base.

Is the Sabah polls a harbinger of what lies ahead for Pakatan Harapan and Umno?

The next general election is not due till 2028 but Melaka has to call for election by the middle of next year and Johor a few months after that.

The coalition has to take corrective measures to avoid a repeat of what happened in Sabah where the Chinese voters threw caution to the wind and sent DAP to Holland (pronounced hor lan), which is a Chinese slang phrase to ask someone to "get lost".

Some sort of psychological barrier came crashing down after the DAP wipe-out.

It was akin to a time when many believed the Malays would never abandon Umno but that Malay psychological barrier crumbled after the 2018 general election.

That was when Malaysians realised Umno is not invincible and things have never been the same again.

The Sabah debacle also opened the floodgates especially in the Chinese vernacular media about what the community thinks of the unity government.

If Malay politicians are able to read the Chinese media, they will have a nervous breakdown.

"It is too early to say that the sky is falling but it is good that the PM is facing the challenges now rather than later. There is still time to take stock, re-evaluate priorities and take corrective measures," said political commentator Khaw Veon Szu.

Selangor executive councillor Dr Fahmi Ngah said there are important lessons to learn from what happened in Sabah.

"What I would like to say is that we are willing to be corrected and we are listening to the demands for reforms and policy issues," said Dr Fahmi who is Seri Setia assemblyman.

He said the Sultan of Selangor’s reminder on race relations was also a priority of PKR which was founded on diversity and multiculturalism.

A PKR division leader from Perak urged his party to show the sort of urgency they see in DAP. He said that the PKR grassroots are asking about remedial measures and the direction of the party.

"They want to know if there will be a post-mortem on what went wrong for us in Sabah. One division chief complained to me that when he asked for advice, he was told to keep attacking Tun Mahathir. There are still another two years to do the right thing," said the division leader.

A number of those he met were also curious about their deputy president and election director Nurul Izzah Anwar, who was not visible in the Sabah campaign while her predecessor Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli is having a field day out there.

They were also critical of another leader who was featured playing golf in Sarawak in the midst of the election campaign.

The last three years have been challenging for those in power and the next two years will pass too quickly.

The more seasoned politicians in Umno say that Anwar is a survivor and should not be under-estimated and often joke that Anwar’s party won only 23 seats in the 2022 general election but he somehow managed to arrive in Parliament with a two-thirds majority.

The more ironic among them say that in Umno, the prime minister ends up in jail, but Anwar came out of jail and became the prime minister.

On a more serious note, Anwar needs to bite the bullet, spend more time at home and prioritise domestic issues. He should also take a cue from his predecessors who would set aside their weekends to "turun padang" or touch base with the ordinary folk.

Anwar sparkles on the international stage but it is domestic and economic issues that determine the day.

Meanwhile, the question on many people’s lips is: Can Anwar mend the cracks forming in Pakatan?

The views expressed here are the author's own.