Parochial, pathetic, puny predecessors of PMX

By M Santhananaban

With the exception of an ailing Abdullah Badawi, all our living, former sub-par prime ministers seem to be particularly petty, prickly and offensive to our current prime minister.

These former PM show no exemplary grace and gratitude for the opportunity they had to serve as leaders in the past. Nor do they have the generosity to let the tenth PM, Anwar Ibrahim (or PMX, as he is widely known), implement the important reforms the nation desperately needs.

Recent former prime ministers, including Najib Razak, were in hindsight mediocre, mendacious and miserably parochial. Some of them are now meddling and posturing to sabotage the current government.

They seem incapable of accepting that Malaysia is a plural society where unity and diversity are strengths. They find it difficult to grasp that any head of government has to be inclusive, accommodating to every segment of the population, and able to provide leadership to the entire nation rather than to a particular ethnicity or region.

These unfortunate, low-calibre, distracted leaders had come to the prime minister’s post well equipped with bragging rights, relatively broad sectarian support and helpful provisions of the Official Secrets Act, which buttressed and made their position almost unassailable.

Anwar did not assume office with those advantages. For a start, he shot himself in the foot by forgoing his monthly emoluments. This was a no-no for his immediate predecessors, especially the one who claims all his wealth is derived from savings on his salary and allowances.

Anwar is also consistently – and annoyingly for them – talking about fighting corruption and eliminating leakages.

Because he entered the prime minister’s office after a clean break of over two decades from the traditional patronage politics of the Umno behemoth – and yet with token Umno support – valid questions are being raised about the actual effective authority he can wield.

With such obvious operational constraints and his serious effort to represent the interests of the minorities, especially those in Sabah and Sarawak, in a traditionally peninsular Malay-dominated political, parliamentary and administrative system, Anwar certainly has to cope with headwinds. It is an uphill task.

With these operational and credible corruption-fighting commitments, which enjoy great popular resonance, Anwar has taken on a colossal, courageous and unprecedented task.

For Umno stalwarts who believe in their party’s primordial supremacy and Anwar’s other political opponents, the PM is attempting an impossible tightrope mission. He is attempting to attack Umno’s patronage politics with token rather than true Umno support.

Nerve-wracking Najib-Nazlan nexus

This conflict with Umno is perhaps best borne out in the quaint quest for a pardon for the convicted Najib.

Aspersions are being cast on the first High Court judge who convicted him. The substance of Justice Nazlan Ghazali’s judgment has passed muster with three Court of Appeal judges and five Federal Court judges. Four other Federal Court judges upheld Nazlan’s findings with another judge dissenting.

One Umno minister in Anwar’s cabinet, in correspondence with a mediocre Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission cabal, has been involved in a half-hearted gesture to invite questions about the integrity of Nazlan. The storyline being pushed is no longer about Najib’s serious offences – for which he was convicted – but about Nazlan’s character.

As PM in a functioning democracy, Anwar cannot comment too abrasively about the judiciary. He has respectfully maintained artful silence.

Hateful, hostile environment

In this difficult and hostile environment, Anwar has be extremely cautious and realistic. He cannot compromise on his long-championed reformist credentials. But he also has to acknowledge the ‘sensitivities’ in the minds of his important Umno allies.

It makes no sense at all for many – but the average thinking person in Malaysian still wants this PM to perform like a rockstar, mesmerising the entire population with his excisions of Umno ministers, explicit endorsement of a rapid and radical reform agenda while playing the role of a rainmaker, renewal man and reconciler. They want him to create the ambience to lift the country out of its mood of a generation-long period of gloom, doom and depression.

So there are all these impossible public expectations of Anwar. Perhaps such expectations are understandable after the decades-long decline of the nation, which has bred much failure, frustration, hopelessness and fractiousness.

But unrealistically high hopes are certainly out of place in the current situation. Time, exceptional talent, and tremendous consensus and confidence-building efforts are needed to pull the country out of its deep morass.

Although Anwar was the best-groomed candidate for leadership, there was not only a lack of a consensus about him among the leading lights of the country but also a distinctly unusual dismissal, disparagement and distrust of him.

Certainly, Anwar inherited a monumental mess from his predecessors.

The country had been plagued in recent decades by pervasive corruption – especially elite corruption – flagrant abuse of high office and a bloated bureaucratic behemoth. Add environmental degradation, poor quality of education, yawning income disparities and high household debt added to the litany of problem.

Policymakers even have to contend with statistical inadequacy: imagine, the number of undocumented foreigners cannot be assessed accurately.

Add to this the mediocre mainstream press, the poor quality of tertiary institutions and overcrowded public health facilities.

Perennial unpredictable, massive traffic congestion causes loss of working hours and frustration, and reduces efficiency and productivity.

Much more seriously, debt-servicing costs have been increasing – and the need to incur more debt for unsustainable transport infrastructure has become fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, public transport planning and provision was neglected because an overpowering prime minister in an earlier era was more obsessed for decades with manufacturing, promoting and marketing particular brands of motor vehicles locally.

In the process, the public transport system was allowed to become wholly inadequate and irrelevant.

The government ‘succeeded spectacularly’ in putting two or three locally manufactured motor vehicles outside most houses, even in low-income housing areas.

In the name of privatisation, essential public services were farmed out to favoured individuals and families. The costs of these services such as water, electricity and mobile phone services were allowed to rise to enrich these individuals at the expense of ordinary people.

For instance, internet services in Malaysia on a monthly basis cost more than in most Asian countries, including relatively affluent ones, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and other countries including Thailand, Pakistan, China, Vietnam and India.

Corruption translates into relatively higher infrastructure costs for road and rail-building per km as well.

So Malaysia succeeded in creating some super-rich individuals and families at the expense of the masses.

Serious divisions

But much, much more important than these issues are the divisions that exist in society based on the urban-rural divide, ethnicity, religion, region and riches created in the past forty years by Anwar’s predecessors.

Yes, the category of riches is pertinent, because beginning with Dr Mahathir Mohamad, a conscious attempt was made to deliberately enrich selected individuals and the peninsula, while Sabah and Sarawak were left out and deprived in a deceitful way. Sabah’s demography was also altered and engineered to suit the interests of particular leaders.

Meanwhile, according to the Employees Provident Fund, over two million contributors aged between 40 and 54 have less than RM10,000 in their retirement savings accounts.

The Malaysia that Anwar has inherited is one where there are small pockets of the affluent and privileged who can afford premium medical attention at prestigious private hospitals, education for their children at international schools and universities abroad, fine-dining and holidays in six-star hotels, and overseas holidays in the most exotic destinations.

The country has the best private health and medical facilities, recreational clubs and country resorts for the super-rich, who live in secure palatial homes in gated communities.

For the majority of people in Malaysia, however, their incomes are barely enough to cover food, living and transport costs. Recreational or local holiday activities for them are a rare luxury.

Fuel costs have grown into a persistent source of irritation – although fuel is subsidised – because of the large amount of fuel burnt in traffic congestion. Motor vehicles are bought on hire purchase loans of up to nine years, while wear and tear imperatives hike up their maintenance cost as the vehicles age.

Although public health facilities are available at nominal cost, the waiting period and travel costs can be prohibitive.

True, hardcore poverty is well below 10% – less than 6%. But wages have been depressed for historical reasons. Bantuan Tunai Rahmah, the compassionate cash aid scheme, reportedly has 8.7 million recipients – a quarter of the population – which gives us a glimpse of the extent of low incomes.

At the time of independence, the outgoing colonial power successfully extracted an assurance for foreign, largely British, investments to be provided with a continuing comparable margin of dividends or profits.

But six decades after independence, wages for the lower rungs are so low that the nation has to rely on an overwhelming number of low-wage foreign workers.

Challenging times for Anwar

Anwar is now expected to be the miracle healer of these divides, breaches, failings and weaknesses. But he finds himself thwarted by Pas and Bersatu with some helpful Umno stalwarts.

Then there are some clever analysts who attack, castigate and censure Anwar, as if all these monumental problems can be easily whisked away.

We sometimes forget we are a parliamentary democracy where bargaining, persuasion and negotiation to achieve particular objectives can take time and much effort. Sometimes, it would also need a change of circumstances, as well as players.

Anwar cannot change things in the imperious and impertinent way Mahathir did in the 1980s and 1990s. For a start, he does not have the harsh and now repealed Internal Security Act (which allowed detention without trial). Nor does he have a tightly controlled press with an overarching monopoly of political narratives. Instead, social media has been well integrated into our society.

Significantly, he did not have an illustrious predecessor like Hussein Onn, who bequeathed a solid and sound state with the best governance.

After that blatantly outrageous billion-dollar white-collar crime involving Najib, many in Malaysia are also somewhat distrustful of top officials. Anwar thus cannot foist a 2035 vision or a ‘Malaysia Reinvented’ theme that easily.

So we need to recognise the challenging and drastically changed environment for Anwar.

Dato’ M Santhananaban is a retired Malaysian ambassador with 45 years of public sector experience

The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.

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