YESTERDAY, I expressed confidence that the Prime Minister (PM) Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government can survive for five years and graded the survival chances as follows:
- 90% it can survive for one year;
- 80% it can survive for three years; and
- 70% it can survive for the full term of five years.
I stressed that an important element determining the durability of Anwar as Malaysia’s 10th PM is whether UMNO can play a leading role to reset Malaysia and return the country to the original nation-building principles of plural Malaysia as set out in the Federal Constitution and the Rukun Negara.
I also said that “the disastrous performance of UMNO in the 15th General Election (GE15) is proof that it is a mistake to believe that the Malay voters are loyal supporters of BOSSKU (Datuk Seri Najib Razak) despite his many 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Bhd) charges in court.
For if this was true, then UMNO should have experienced a revival instead of unprecedented defeat in the national general election last November.
In the GE15, UMNO lost to the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition of PAS and Bersatu because they seemed “clean and pure” as compared to UMNO.
But post-GE15 developments have shown that PAS and Bersatu are not the inheritors of the first four UMNO presidents for a clean and honest government – Datuk Onn Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak Hussein and Tun Hussein Onn.
Bersatu has now a bigger corruption scandal than the 1MDB scandal – the RM7.2 bil Jana Wibawa scandal – while PAS has taken a shocking stand that corruption is caused by non-Muslims – ignoring the giant strides which China. India and Indonesia have made in their fight against corruption as against Malaysia in the last three decades.
Bersatu and PAS have nothing to offer Malaysians of diverse races, religions and regions about the future of Malaysia.
The outlook for the Anwar unity government is positive but it must not self-destruct by embarking on polices which are totally at variance with its core values and the principles of the original nation-building principles for a plural Malaysia which had the support of the first four UMNO presidents.
The Anwar unity government must enter the general election in the six states of Penang, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu in July/August to uphold the nation-building principles in the first quarter of a century of Malaysia’s nationhood under the first three Prime Ministers of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein Onn. – April 11, 2023
Veteran lawmaker, Malaysia’s longest serving Opposition leader (29 years in total) and retired DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang was the former MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
