UMNO, Bersatu and PAS have failed to form a stable government, as the Malay unity rhetoric has proved to be a false promise for Malaysia.
If I had made this statement, it would be taken as proof of the allegation that I am anti-Malay and anti-Islam, but this was stated by Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, the president of Parti Warisan Sabah and former chief minister, at the Regional Outlook Forum 2021 hosted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore last Thursday.
Shafie said Malaysian politics needs a reset in 2021 and beyond, as the Malay unity rhetoric has proven to be a false promise.
He said: “Umno, Bersatu and PAS have failed to form a stable government.
“About 70% of Malays are urban, and 80% of Malaysians are urban. But Umno, PAS and Bersatu are still working on the basis that a majority of Malays are rural. They will soon find a revolt of urban Malays who return to the kampung to vote.”
The Semporna MP said a new narrative is needed across the country’s key pillars – political, economic and social – covering everything from governance and accountability to education, technology, healthcare and social mobility.
“There is no place left for racial and religious politics – unity needs to be the bedrock of reform, through a participatory democracy, one that is fully represented across key stakeholders – old and young, urban and rural, liberals and conservatives, through a values-based system of governance that transcends race and religion.
“Malaysians will have to decide our own political future. We have to go through this difficult but worthy struggle to graduate from old ideas to fresh ones, to forge a Malaysian nation to face the post-2020 era.”
Shafie’s words are timely if we are not to experience catastrophic developments in Malaysian nation-building like what is happening in the United States, where in Washington, President Donald Trump’s mob stormed the Capitol building during a joint session of Congress to certify the election of Joe Biden as the 46th president.
Trump had spent two months subverting democracy by denying his election loss, and spent four years shredding truth and deepening cultural and racial divides for political gain.
In Malaysia, politics has been poisoned for decades by incendiary lies and falsehoods that DAP is communist, anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-Malay rulers, and during the 22 months of the Pakatan Harapan government, this campaign of disinformation was intensified, polarising the nation as it was designed to create the false impression that Malay rights, dignity and position, and the future of Islam, faced unprecedented peril.
Umno, Bersatu and PAS are now locked in a “three-kingdom” tussle of plots and counter-plots, which Umno leaders want to be resolved as early as possible, before its strength vis-à-vis the other two parties is further diluted.
Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has said the party will field candidates in all parliamentary and state seats that it won in the 2008 general election. If so, three Bersatu ministers and two deputy ministers will have no seats to contest.
But, this will not be the bottom line of Umno’s demands for the 15th general election, as the pressure will be for the party to contest most of the parliamentary seats it did in GE14 – except for the seats won by PAS. This will pave the way for the crushing, even disappearance, of Bersatu.
The 11-month Perikatan Nasional government has seen Malaysia returning to the trajectory of kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state.
In its quest to regain Putrajaya, Umno leaders – like Trump – have ignored the greatest peril facing the nation and the world: the Covid-19 pandemic.
Worldwide, infections have passed 90 million with over 1.94 million fatalities, while Malaysia has registered a total of 135,992 cases and 551 deaths, overtaking both China and Myanmar, and set to overtake the Philippines.
It was precisely this selfish and short-term pursuit of politics in the Sheraton Move that caused the second and third Covid-19 waves in Malaysia, the latter surging to a nightmarish peak.
Malaysians have not seen the light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic.
The answer is to restore the mandate to PH, and with Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the ninth prime minister, Malaysia can start fulfilling its aspiration to be a united, harmonious, multiracial and world-class nation, where there is democracy, good governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and the environment, and “a beacon of light in a disturbed and distracted world”.
We will not only escape the trajectory of kleptocracy, kakistocracy and a failed state, but win the war against Covid-19. – The Vibes, January 11, 2021
Lim Kit Siang is DAP’s Iskandar Puteri MP
