Former enemies, allies, who cares?

FOR many Malaysians, the parties they don’t want to form the government is all about who they hate or fear the most.

Let’s take the Pakatan Harapan crowd. During the campaigning for the 15th General Election (GE15), the Pakatan narrative was that a vote for Barisan Nasional was a vote for Barisan chairman and Umno president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to become prime minister.

Now that the election is over and Pakatan needs Barisan’s 30 MPs to form the Federal Government, suddenly, many Pakatan supporters seem to have forgotten their hate for Umno and Ahmad Zahid because they fear PAS and Bersatu forming the government.

The irony is that the politician the Pakatan crowd hated because of alleged corruption is the one who almost single-handedly made Pakatan chairman and PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim the PM.

Now there’s near silence from those who were shouting that a vote for Khairy Jamaluddin in Sungai Buloh is a vote for Ahmad Zahid as PM. And now, Ahmad Zahid might even become a deputy prime minister.

Some will argue that embracing Umno is a necessary evil – something unpleasant that must be accepted to achieve a particular result.

From the chatter on WhatsApp groups, the Pakatan crowd has now trained its anti-corruption missiles at Perikatan Nasional chairman and Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who narrowly missed becoming the prime minister again.

They want an investigation into the more than RM500bil in Covid-19 stimulus and aid measures Muhyiddin’s government spent when he was PM.

Do Malaysians hate corruption or are they selective about which allegedly corrupt politicians they hate?

It reminds me of my many chats with highly-educated urban voters.

“You hate N because he is corrupt. But why do you love M, as he too is corrupt? Since you hate corruption, why are you supporting M?” I asked them.

“M is less corrupt than N,” they usually answer.

“But since you hate corruption, shouldn’t you hate M too?” I wondered.

In the end, it is not that they hate corruption, it is just that they have been conditioned to hate N.

Let’s see what the Pakatan crowd will say if an MP with pending corruption charges is appointed to Anwar’s Cabinet.

The voters in my urban bubble like to tell me it is about voting for the lesser evil.

When you think about that saying, it means all the choices are evil. It is just that you are picking someone who is 1% or 10% less evil. But evil is evil whether it is 1% or 10%.

It’s like how people justify the alleged corruption of S. They’ll say it is OK as it is only one million ringgit while N’s charges involve a billion and more. But isn’t corruption still corruption regardless of the amount?

Many are celebrating the unity government led by Anwar. But is it a unity government when 73 MPs from Perikatan, which represents about 54% of the Malay electorate, are not a part of it?

The Anwar government has a two-thirds majority but that doesn’t include MPs from PAS, the party with the biggest number of seats at 49, and from Bersatu (now the new Umno) with 24 seats.

Some who support the unity government are saying “no to PAS” joining it.

But these are the same voters who at one time were OK with PAS when they were in the same coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (2008 to 2015).

The best quote to illustrate this is: “It was PAS unit amal (volunteers) who protected us from the police during the Bersih rally.”

We’ve seen the viral photographs and videos of Pakatan Rakyat leaders – from DAP, PKR and PAS – hugging each other. That was then. Now, DAP and PKR are political enemies of PAS and political friends with Umno, who used to be their enemy.

So is our government a unity government?

Let’s look at it from the perspective of PAS supporters.

For them, all the Chinese MPs are in the Anwar government, while all the Perikatan MPs, who are in about 70 Malay/Muslim seats, are not. They feel that they have been sidelined. The clash of civilisations (progressive vs conservative) in the country will continue, and the rift could widen.

The Padang Serai by-election will be a barometer of Malay voters’ sentiments. The Kedah seat is about 57% Malay, and Pakatan has been winning in it since 2008. Will the Malays unite against the unity government?

After GE15, who do you hate or fear the most? Is it still the same, or do you now love your political enemy?