The factual trials and non-fictive tribulations of Nurul Izzah in the New Malaysia

Nurul Izzah. -filepic

THE government is alternately regarded as a state. As public policy specialist David Easton once called it, “the authoritative allocation of values”.

The government, whether due to its sins of commissions or omissions, can cause considerable pain.

As the “Princess of Reformasi”, Nurul Izzah, barely 40 and Member of Parliament of Permatang Pauh, has experienced all the trials and tribulations that no average person would have gone through.

This involves seeing heavily armed police men barging into her home while she was in her mere teens to arrest her father Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, then the deputy prime minister, in 1998, and confronting the horror of seeing her dad being subjected to two, not one, scurrilous trials on the spurious charges; all of which the most previous monarch of Malaysia has indeed pardoned and forgiven.

Everyone knows Nurul Izzah has confronted the beast that is the government – indeed, the entire edifice of the state – and bears the visible and invisible scars of the pain.

Whether her defiance is as simple as resigning from the vice presidency of PKR, presided over by her mum and dad on an alternate basis over the last 20 years, her most recent interview with The Straits Times of Singapore shows a dignified woman who is nonetheless dejected by the slow pace of reforms.

By declaring that this is potentially her last term as an MP, perhaps only in Permatang Pauh, Penang, but not elsewhere in Malaysia, Nurul Izzah has also shown the all-too-human need to recover, both deeply and spiritually, from decades of sordid political mudslinging.

The puzzle facing Nurul Izzah is one quite similar to what her father Anwar once posed when manhandled and punched by the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Rahim Noor: “If this can happen to me, imagine what could happen to average citizens?”

Well, if Nurul Izzah can experience a burnout, barely a year after the victorious triumph of Pakatan on that historic night of May 9, 2018, imagine what every Malaysian can feel when they have to struggle with the syndrome of procrastination?

Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his ilk, including his wife, still believe that every delay in their legal trial is a step closer to their own freedom.

But when Pakatan is inconsistent and inconsiderate in stalling on more reforms, then one cannot help but be empathetic to the inner struggles of Nurul Izzah.

Whether she is conducting herself as an MP, Nurul Izzah is a Malaysian first and foremost. She has the front row seat of the machinations in Parliament, and beyond.

She also has a perspective that is even rarer: she knows who are directly stirring the pot to bring about the downfall of not just Anwar, the incoming prime minister, but the incumbent Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is her mother too.

By declaring that this is her last term, Nurul Izzah has underscored the extent to which power and ambition of some politicians, many of whom are from her own party, have come to the fore.

These are elements who cannot bear to wait to pluck the low-hanging fruit of the state, either at the level of the Federation or otherwise.

The pain Nurul Izzah feels, in this sense, is that of the average Malaysian. Many want meaningful and qualitative change. The sort that is systemic and structural.

The Parliament, for example, will have select committees across a bevy of issues, to hold each policy accountable and transparent.

The last Nurul Izzah or many Malaysians want to see is the politics of same old, some old (s.o.s.o.).

The latter is akin to the movie Groundhog Day. Every day, the lead character played by Bill Murray wakes up to the same old routine.

Whether it is a car zipping by a pothole to splash muddied waters on his trenchcoat, or, experiencing exactly the same the next morning, politics that acquires and retains such quality of dour sameness is nothing less than a vapid display of s.o.s.o. – and even that is putting it mildly.

Nurul Izzah, like it or not, represents the majestic elegance of reform over the last 20 years.

By defending her seat in Pantai, Kuala Lumpur, a constituency that represents the best and worst of both Malaysia – due largely to the vast income gap – it goes without saying that she knows the actual reforms of closing the income differentials of the people of Malaysia has either been waylaid by the powers that be, or hijacked by “Little Napoleons” in the party.

Islam does not accept one who gives up. That’s not what Nurul Izzah has done. Of all the politicians out there, she is probably the only one who knows that it is the people who decide the trajectory and direction of Malaysia, not some backroom scheming, much as such shenanigans may, momentarily, seem to win out.

Madcap attempts to hijack or capture the state, either by selling its assets, or stripping it clean, are but a veiled attempt to increase the size of its political liquidity – ironically at a time when the Malaysian government has been left with mere crumbs by the previous administration.

Nurul Izzah has seen things that have weighed down on her “unbearable lightness of being”, as playwright DH Lawrence once affirmed.

But she has also taken the step to warn Malaysians in her Straits Times interview. (Despite its paywall, all Malaysians are at least entitled to a single read).

When they do, they should wonder if the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that once bored down deeply and mercilessly on Hamlet in the Shakespearean play of the same name, is the start of another slide in Malaysian democracy – what top South-East Asian observer Joshua Kurtlanzick at the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations called “democratic retreat”.

Nurul Izzah's every decision to be in or out politics has now become a barometer of how fast, deep and healthy the pace of democratic reforms is proceeding at.

If she is holding back or stepping down, or voicing out, Nurul Izzah's decision is doing the country a favour. At least she is there to sound the death knell of reforms turned awry.

She isn't staying put just to enjoy the perks and privilege of the trappings of parliamentary office. Malaysians be warned. The winter may yet be coming for those who are hardwired to understand the spectre of The Game of Thrones.

For now, one should give Nurul Izzah the necessary space and room to recover from any fatigue, after close to a generation of unrelenting assault against the Leviathan that is the State.

Without the Leviathan, classical philosophers argued that life “would be brutish, lone and short”.

It should be added that with a Leviathan that is incapable of restraining its power through parliamentary checks and balances, life would just be as miserable, since MPs across the aisle are there to enjoy their moment in office, not to serve the larger agenda of improving the lot of the country in, and across, the region.

Dr Rais Hussin is president and CEO of Emir Research.