“COLLAPSE, collapse, collapse of the unity government” seems to be mantra used these days to topple the unity government set up with the blessing of the palace.
Anyone who starts to read and think critically will detect signs of an on-going campaign designed to impress on unsuspecting citizens that the unity government is about to fall apart.
Even Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim himself is aware of the conspiracy to topple the unity government. “But, there is no basis,” he is quoted saying during his speech at the Labour Day celebration on Monday (May 1), citing the government’s focus is to solve woes of the rakyat on the ground.
Anwar had earlier warned that, as he fought against corruption, many of the warlords would turn against him to defend the corrupt.
We agree with Essex-trained political scientist, Prof Wong Chin Huat who claimed that netizens “will continuously hear new plots of Sheraton Move 2.0”.
We concur with Wong that it is unlikely that it would be a political suicide if 15 parliamentarians were to resign and re-contest under the Perikatan Nasional (PN) banner.
“Ultimately, it is just another attempt to keep Malaysia deeply divided on partisan lines and prevent a true multiparty democracy from emerging,” Wong pointed out.
Two poles apart
The different between PN as the current Opposition and Pakatan Harapan I(PH) when it was in Opposition is the former’s preoccupation with anything that they could do to de-stabilise the government of the day.
The plot can only get thicker as we approach the upcoming state elections across six states – Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Penang, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu – in July/August this year.
Ultimately, it is up to the people to decide whether Anwar’s unity government is worth the salt after it seeks to focus on bringing reforms to the society which has already become too entrenched in corruption, excesses, divisions and political intimidation.
Quoting a few headlines, for example, is an article written by political commentator Murray Hunter and re-published by Raja Petra Kamaruddin’s blog (RPK) Malaysia Today entitled “A Second Scenario of How the Anwar Government Could Fall”.
PN Federal Territories’ information chief Mahathir Mohd Rais in a recent article wrote, “As Malaysians, we must assess the effectiveness and stability of Anwar’s unpredictable political journey to determine if it truly benefits our nation or if we should place our faith in PN.”
In another article published by an online portal entitled, ‘Is another government collapse imminent in Malaysia?’ analysts such as Prof James Chin of University of Tasmania, were quoted.
We also carried another story by A. Kadir Jasin, a deemed Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad loyalist, who asked, “Could it be enemies from within who’s spooking the PM?”
As a news portal, we believe in being balanced and neutral as we have readers from both camps. We don’t wish to be lopsided in granting coverage to both sides of the divide – to bluntly put it, we are neither HarakahDaily nor Harapan Daily but an “in-between” of both news portals.
Therefore, we expect our readers to be able to make their assessment. This is where they have to read and think critically while studying the pattern in which news is being hyped up by certain unseen hands.
But one thing very clear to us is that every effort is made to forcing a change in the present government using the same dirty tactic it had used during the Sheraton Move.
At the end of the day, it is a question of whether the people are with Anwar’s unity government or otherwise. This would determine Anwar’s success or failure in delivering the reforms that he has promised.
Losing politicians tend to leverage this kind of psychological warfare, well-aware that the mantra they chant to shift people’s sentiments against Anwar’s good intentions could eventually become a reality. Quoting Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, “A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the `truth’”.
Politicians will not care if their doings would create political instability that could eventually drive away potential investors.
What Malaysians should demand is a more stable government with a responsible Opposition that is capable of doing the checks-and-balances as what PH had done in the past. – May 3, 2023
