The Changing Tunes of the Pied Piper

When it comes to the crunch, our PM is reluctant to change. He makes all the wonderful noises giving Malaysians the placebo effect on assuming the office of PM. That was before when he and his advisors thought, his aura and personality can pull the government through. After achieving dismal results in GE13, he has a change of heart.

Where is the Najib brand now? Where is the 1Malaysia concept now? His ETP? His other initiatives? All these are taking a back seat so that Najib can prepare for his survival in the UMNO elections. Najib will have the support of those who depend on his benevolence to enrich themselves and those fearful of a game changing leadership. A leadership that dismisses the influence of Mahathir and with it, the business interests of those whom Mahathir has made rich.

At heart, he wants to preserve all the privileges that come with retaining power. How can he render asunder the system that gives life to UMNO?- the corruption, the use of position, the giving of patronage, staying on top of the pyramid scheme? Even if he wants to, the forces in UMNO are too overwhelming. The UMNO dynamics can never be understood by the APCO people or the apco-infused thinking  of his think-tank group led by JJ.

On the surface he articulates transformation and all that. Nothing he does can hide the fact that Najib is a weak leader, playing to the gallery most of the time.

He confuses the issue of change and transformation. Malaysians of all political persuasions do not want to overthrow the system of government. Meaning we don’t want to overthrow the legitimate government through illegitimate means unless we are ruled by an absolute tyrant. What we want is change as reformation.

We haven’t said what reformation is explicitly. It means re-constituting, re arranging some composition within the system without changing the substance. The substance of our politics will always be an elected democratic government, with constitutional rulers, upholding the rule of law and dispensing just and equitable policies.

Reformation means getting rid of the bad elements. Such as the early and postal voting which a recent study showed that BN would not have won the general elections and forming the national government if not for it.

Which change is Naib talking of? Change as innovation which is essentially destructive because it substitutes existing institutions of the state with potentially harmful experiments. Or at best whose outcome is not so predictable. Or is he talking of change as reform which is intended to preserve and improve the basic institutions of the state?

For example, if we do away with postal and early voting, will removing it confer a new abstract right to the people? Or does it simply mean, handing to the people, a right which is always theirs in the first place, constituted in our political system- which is a right for every citizen in the country to exercise freely his/her choice of government? Doing away with early and postal voting is change as reformation because it preserves a right that is always there in the first place.

Najib should not disbelieve the will of the people in wanting change as reformation. It is a thoughtful process restrained by prudence. We don’t want change as reformation because of light and transient causes. Those are motives imputed only by people like Najib and his pliant press.

Najib as PM isn’t reading the political temperature correctly. After failing to do better than Pak Lah, he is now saying that change takes a few generations. The chickens have come back to roost. His real political character has emerged after performing worse than Pak Lah. UMNO gets 88 seats because it won in areas where voting densities are less and where gerrymandering gave unfair advantage to rural areas. Urban areas have densities a high as 140,000 votes , rural areas have densities like 16-20,000 voters. Najib would not have won if not for early and postal voting. Najib only managed to get 133 seats, less by 7 achieved by Pak Lah. Najib got 47% of the popular votes. So where is Najib’s success?

He knows he hasn’t delivered. The UMNO people know he has not. Why should he be treated any differently than Pak Lah?.

What is DAP’s interest in the leadership change of the government? Its interest lies in the potential emergence of a leadership cognizant of political realities of the future. That political future is one that accepts convergence and not divergence as the answer to our political well-being. On the part of the government for the time being, we are interested to see the emergence of a leadership that has the courage to carry out change as reformation. Najib understands the concept, but lacks courage.