By whatever Doors Necessary.

ANWAR’S ROUTE TO PUTRAJAYA.

There’s a difference between the views of an armchair social theorist and the man of practical politics. Dr Chandra Muzaffar who is a pleasant fellow is full of niceties. He is a kind soul.

He therefore finds it reprehensible in every imaginable way, to think that Anwar intends to march into Putrajaya through the back door. Nowadays, people are stuck with terms referring to encounters of the sexual kind.

As to the less than democratic way to Putrajaya, it is anathema to Chandra’s intellectual constitution.

That Anwar intends to go to Putrajaya by whatever means necessary should not be a head-splitting load on us. That is the rai-son detre of his politics anyway- to secure power in justification of his raison detat. Once power is achieved, the means by which that power is obtained is quickly forgotten.

Why appeal to sanctity of political theories to stop Anwar? Securing political power is unfortunately not the same as submitting our assignment papers beautifully and elegantly written, readying themselves for marking by the good professor.

The same vehemence and sting in Dr Chandra Muzaffar’s analysis can be equally applied to machinations of UMNO leaders in seeking political immortality. Witness the recent power transfer plans by the UMNO president and the head of the UMNO wanita wing. That too, are in violation of established democratic principles and are equally morally and political heinous. In theory of course.

But then practical men of politics have made a career in debunking political theories and myths.

We would find it more profitable to assign our thinking to a post Anwar victory. Frantz Fanon, the author of The Wretched Of The Earth tells of the story of the oppressed becoming the oppressor.

Will Anwar become the oppressor after he gains power?

In The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre, first published 1961) Fanon a trained psychiatrist, explored the psychological effect of colonization on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization.

The keen intellect of Chandra Muzaffar would of course recognize that Anwar’s colonization is the amount of years in incarceration and horrendous treatment that he has received( read oppression). Anwar’s proposal to go to Putrajaya through what Chandra terms as backdoor, is Anwar’s advocacy of a form of political violence. In the opening chapter of Fanon’s book, ‘Concerning Violence’ Fanon seems to justify violence as a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. In a similar vein I am sure Anwar will justify his route to power as a caustic indictment of his own years of suffering. By whatever doors. And his views have many adherents. To Anwar, his eventual occupation of Putrajaya, is a means of liberation and a catharsis to his oppressed past.

Anwar’s PKR have all sorts of people. It has the intellectuals and as recent events proved, it also has its brownshirts. Could the brownshirts in PKR represent what Fanon termed as the lumpenproletariat as the force needed to expel Pak Lah and his government? The lumpenproletariat are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat, the riff-raff who lacked class consciousness. Just like Fanon, perhaps the PKR bosses argue that only this group, unlike the industrial proletariat, has sufficient independence from the BN ‘colonists’ to successfully make a revolution against them.

UMNO must prepare itself for a trench warfare. In the immortal words of the Bulldog-

we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,