ANWAR'S BID FOR FEDERAL POWER:WHISHFUL THINKING?

Anwar's Bid for Federal Power: Wishful Thinking?
Tag it:Jed Yoong



Now for the hard part: Having won his by-election, Malaysia’s opposition leader seeks the big prize




After winning his by-election Tuesday with a decisive 66 percent of the 46,811 votes to return to parliament as opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim now starts the endgame that he hopes will make him Malaysia’s prime minister. It probably won’t be as easy as he is trying to make it look.

Anwar and his party faithful paint the win in the Malay-majority constituency in a rural part of Penang state as an endorsement of him as potential premier, making his Pakatan Rakyat the dominant coalition in parliament. As Malays make up about 60 percent of the national population, support from this ethnic group is crucial for legitimacy to lead the nation and for Pakatan to form a stable federal government, which Anwar promises to create by luring 40-odd Barisan Nasional lawmakers over to his coalition. Currently, Pakatan has 81 federal lawmakers, the Barisan has 140 and one is independent.

But some analysts say that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's weak leadership is in part to blame and the by-election result as much a rejection of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the largest ethnic party in the Barisan Nasional, as it was approval of Anwar. Agitation for Badawi’s scalp among the UMNO faithful, which has been considerable since the disastrous March 8 election that lost the ruling coalition its two-thirds majority parliamentary grip, is growing and intraparty factionalism is rife. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who personally led the losing UMNO campaign against Anwar, is also facing increasing unrest over his leadership.

Besides putting Anwar in a parliamentary seat as opposition leader across the aisle from Abdullah Badawi, however, the by-election doesn’t change the big picture immediately. The number of national coalition and opposition lawmakers in parliament remains the same, one longtime Malaysian analyst pointed out. Anwar took the seat vacated by his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, shortly after he was accused by a onetime aide in his office of sodomy. Asked about the implications of the by-election, the analyst brushed off Anwar's comeback as a "non-event", adding, "The only difference is that Anwar will become opposition leader instead of Wan Azizah."

It is hardly a non-event. But there is the question of keeping the fractious opposition coalition together. The fundamentalist Parti Islam se-Malaysia, or PAS, in particular already feels it has been given a raw deal in states won by the opposition, according to the analyst, with PAS leaders asking why their role in state governments has been minimized. PAS feels it is the strongest party in terms of numbers, and that it provided the electoral foot soldiers, branch networks and logistical support that enabled the opposition to do well in the March election. That sits uneasily with the largely Chinese Democratic Action Party, the third leg in the opposition coalition.

At the PAS annual general assembly, some PAS speakers also pointed out that PAS worked together with Anwar in 1981 in Abim, a Muslim-based NGO that made Anwar’s name nationally, and that Anwar abandoned to join UMNO, from which he was ultimately ejected by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

It is a “tricky dilemma for Anwar,” said the analyst. “If he fails to reassure his Malay/Muslim supporters that they still enjoy dominance, he will be in big trouble. But if he tries to burnish his Malay/Muslim credentials, he risks alienating his non-Malay supporters and he risks being perceived as an UMNO clone. Anwar was part of UMNO for 16 years; he thrived in UMNO's money politics culture and he was successful in UMNO because of his image as a strong Malay and Muslim leader.”

It is also questionable, despite his claim of having already done it, how many defecting federal lawmakers Anwar can lure from Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia, which between them have 54 parliamentary seats. But animosity between Anwar and Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, who heads Sarawak's biggest party and has 14 federal lawmakers, suggests that few of the defections will come from Taib’s party, Persaka Bumiputera Bersatu. Taib is allegedly ticked off by disparaging remarks that Anwar made in the Sarawak state election in 2006.

Although Taib has reportedly said that he will support whoever takes over the federal government, loyalties in East Malaysian politics are even more fluid than in Peninsular Malaysia.

As the Barisan has 30 of 31 federal lawmakers in Sarawak, that leaves only another 16 lawmakers from smaller parties for Anwar to try to poach. Unless the lawmakers join one of the parties in Pakatan, Anwar may face the possibility of further fragmenting his precarious coalition if more parties leap onboard.

Sabah may offer the best hope, with Jeffrey Kitingan driving the charge in the state. After all, Kitigan, the analyst says, has plenty of experience in party-hopping, having crossed over from the opposition to the Barisan in 2000. It was also reported that Anwar was the mastermind behind defections which crumbled the government of Jeffrey's brother, Joseph Pairin Kitingan after Pairin's party, Parti Bersatu Sabah won state elections in 1994.

Aware of these threats, Abdullah Badawi distributed governmental largesse to both Sabah and Sarawak shortly after the March 8 elections that proved to be a disaster for the national coalition. East Malaysian politics traditionally have been driven by timber and money. Loyalty, especially to peninsular parties like UMNO, is more malleable.

While Anwar may have find it harder to put together his winning coalition than analysts think, UMNO and the rest of the national coalition are perhaps in even worse shape.

"What's clear is that the people rejected the prime minister, and this is also a big blow to Najib," a lawyer closely connected to the Mahathir wing of UMNO told Asia Sentinel in an email interview.

"UMNO could well be dead after this,” he said. “I think the PM made the mistake of dismissing Anwar's threat (of taking over the federal government). It may not happen all at once in September but he's edging there and given time who knows, with discontent so high."

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the 71-year-old politician prince and longstanding contestant for the country's top job, is leading the charge in UMNO against Abdullah.

"Our leadership is rejected by the rakyat (people) and, moreover, is rejected by our own members," the onetime finance minister said in a statement released Tuesday. "The Barisan Nasional’s vote count was less than the number of UMNO members in the constituency. Within and among our component parties we ran a poorly coordinated and listless campaign against a motivated opposition. What scraps of credibility the Prime Minister and his deputy had left after March 8 are gone."

Mahathir, the former and longest serving premier who anointed Abdullah Badawi as his successor in 2003, has turned into the besieged premier's most vitriolic critic. After a Royal Commission suggested the Attorney-General investigate Mahathir for judicial corruption, which includes judge-fixing at the highest level, he loudly quit UMNO and is now an avid blogger at chedet.com.

"Listen to, look at what is demonstrated by voters in Permatang Pauh,” Mahathir wrote. “They did not vote for Dato Seri Anwar and PKR. They voted for that Barisan Nasional and UMNO to lose. The increased majority for Dato Seri Anwar compared to March 8 is definitely because in a period of only five months, support for BN and UMNO has further deteriorated. When do you want to wait till, UMNO members, before you realise Dato Seri Abdullah's leadership needs to be ended?"

Yesterday, he offered to rejoin UMNO to save it.

Victorious Anwar on path to power-ASIA TIMES

Southeast Asia

By Anil Netto

PENANG - Opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim's victory in a crucial by-election in the Permatang Pauh constituency in Penang on Tuesday has thrown wide open the political possibilities in the coming months. Standing under the banner of his People's Justice Party (PKR), he cruised to a 15,671-vote majority on the back of an over 80% turnout among 58,000 voters on the electoral rolls. His majority surpassed the 13,388-vote majority of his wife and PKR president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail in the March 8 general election. His showing was always going to be the benchmark as to whether Anwar could command enough public support for his bid to move "from Permatang Pauh to Putrajaya", the administrative capital of the country. His attempt to use Permatang Pauh as a launch pad for hiscoalition to eventually wrest power from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition was one of the themes of the by-election that captured the imagination of many Malaysians hoping for democratic and economic reforms.


The by-election itself was dogged by the BN's exploitation of the sodomy charges against Anwar, which in the end did not make much headway among the voters of Permatang Pauh as Anwar captured two-thirds of the votes cast. He may also have succeeded in winning about 60-65% of votes from ethnic Malays in a constituency where the group makes up close to 70% of voters. Chinese and Indian Malaysian voters in the constituency are also likely to have voted in droves for the PKR. Anwar has successfully forged a coalition among disparate opposition parties comprising his PKR, the multi-ethnic but Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Islamic party PAS. The coalition - known as the People's Alliance (PR) - won 81 seats in the March 8 general election while the BN secured 140, thus depriving the ruling coalition of its coveted two-thirds parliamentary majority.

The by-election was seen as a barometer as to whether support for the PR had risen since the general election. It was also a gauge of public support for the BN after a sharp petrol price hike of 41% in June, though the price was reduced by 6% last week. For some time now, support for the ruling coalition has been eroding due to its slow pace of curbing corruption, its divisive race-based policies and its failure to introduce key reforms to institutions of democratic governance. Such failures have resulted in the BN's declining moral legitimacy in recent years. The setback to the BN on March 8, when it secured just over half the popular vote, suggests that the erosion of its political legitimacy finally caught up with the decline in its moral legitimacy. Taken together, the BN has been on the defensive since then, unable to stem the erosion to its credibility, as reflected in the result of the by-election. The highly anticipated by-election win thus gives added momentum to Anwar's bid to wrest power by Sept 16, as he has claimed he will do though parliamentary defections. The PR already controls five of 13 states in the federation. Still, it won't be easy to dislodge the ruling coalition, which has governed for close to 51 consecutive years. Public relations strategists probably chose September 16, Malaysia Day, for symbolic reasons. That was the date in 1963 when the federation was formed with the merger of the Malaya peninsula, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore. (Singapore left the federation in 1965.) Anwar is hoping to lure parliamentarians from Sabah and from the United Malays National Organization in particular to defect from the BN.

He will now be sworn in as member of parliament on Thursday and the PR parliamentarians will select him as Parliamentary Opposition Leader. In his campaign speeches, he had said he wants to look Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi in the eye when the premier presents his budget address in parliament at the end of the month. The by-election campaign was in effect a de facto battle between Anwar, the man many believe to be prime minister-in-waiting, and Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, who under a transition plan is scheduled to succeed Abdullah in 2010. That remains to be seen as Najib's star may have faded somewhat after spearheading the BN's lackluster campaign for its candidate Arif Shah Omar Shah. Anwar's campaign itself captured the imagination of many Malaysians with his twin promises to improve national unity and revive the listless economy.

For the non-Malays, his call for a "Malaysian Economic Agenda" that would make the country more competitive globally carries with it the hope of a greater emphasis on meritocracy after years of race-based affirmative action policies favoring the Malays and other indigenous groups. At the same time, he has been able to allay the fears of ethnic Malays that they would lose out if the economic playing field is leveled with minority Chinese and Indians. "I will defend the rights of the Malays, let there be no doubt about that, but we will also help the poor of all races if their need help whether they are Chinese, Indians or others," was his constant refrain throughout the campaign. This approach has enabled Anwar to balance competing aspirations and concerns and build on his political campaign for Putrajaya. But he will first have to navigate past a mention in the courts on the sodomy charge on September 10 along with a new Anti-Corruption Agency investigation into an allegation brought up during the campaign by a former friend-turned-political foe. Anil Netto is a Penang-based writer.

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