Commentary - Collapsing Malaysian politics

Even as bad news hog the economic front, Malaysians are having a stimulating time keeping up with the antics of certain politicians doing the hop.

I sense that you are tired of politics, but a little excited as well, over what’s happening in Perak, and who knows, maybe even Negri Sembilan, no?

You’re not alone.

In the past, this type of action usually occurred in Sabah, and it has to be honestly said that as far as most people in peninsular Malaysia were concerned, it was something that happened a million miles away.

Not any more.

It’s getting to the point where just about anywhere you look, political defections or party-hopping — and wholesale changes of government because of it — seem to be as easy to effect as getting water out of a tap.

What’s next? “ADUNs and MPs Wanted/For Sale” ads in the Classifieds section?

Now we know how the people of Sabah feel.

The first signs of this outbreak of “the froggies” appeared last year.

Mere months after the March 8 general election, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim got the ball rolling with his Sept 16 promise, suggesting that dozens of Members of Parliament were on the verge of defecting from Barisan Nasional to Pakatan Rakyat.

This, after saying in an interview — in which I was one of the interviewers — that Pakatan Rakyat would not rock the boat but would rather focus on strengthening the state governments that it controlled, and ensuring that the people who voted in the alliance in Kelantan, Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor, got the sort of government they wanted.

But soon after that interview, Anwar started talking about cross-overs and began hinting that a Pakatan Rakyat-led federal government was just a matter of time.

It seemed like a real possibility leading up to the much-hyped Sept 16 deadline, with even the Barisan showing some signs of panic by sending its backbenchers on an agriculture study tour to Taiwan.

Nothing much came out of Anwar’s “promise”, and as for the agriculture study tour, I suppose the primary lesson learnt was that in many instances, you will reap what you sow.

It’s probably the lesson that Barisan is bent on teaching right now, especially to the person Gerakan president Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon described as the “King of Frogs”, whoever that may be.

As this column is being written, the Pakatan Rakyat-led Perak government has collapsed. Barisan has announced that it has the numbers to form the state government, with Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasarudin Hashim, who defected to PKR just a few weeks ago, having re-defected, if there is such a word, back to Umno.

So much for his publicly-stated belief in Pakatan Rakyat’s capability “to be a better coalition of component parties for the people’s benefit”. Now it’s about “sacrifice”, or so he says.

Perak state assembly deputy speaker Hee Yit Foong has left the DAP, which raises questions as to exactly what she meant just a few days ago when she said that “I have never had any intention of leaving the party and would feel very heavy-hearted if I did”.

Joining Hee as newly-minted Independents throwing their support behind Barisan are Behrang assemblyman Jamaluddin Mat Radzi and Changkat Jering assemblyman Mohd Osman Jailu, both of whom performed a disappearing act over several days that would have awed even David Copperfield.

In the midst of it all, Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin sought to head off Barisan’s manoeuvres by getting the Perak Sultan’s consent to dissolve the state assembly and call for fresh state elections.

What a turnaround it was for Nizar, as just a few days ago he was quoted as saying that the Perak government was “very stable”. I doubt he would want to answer you right now if you asked what “very shaky” looks like.

In any event, by the time you read this today, Malaysians will probably have found out which side prevailed.

It’s been very exciting, hasn’t it?

Who needs a stimulus package, when politics of the sort we’re seeing over here can probably stimulate just about anything.

At the very least, this drama takes our minds off that nagging worry over the economic hardship that many Malaysians are or will be enduring.

And why not?

Too many of our politicians don’t seem to be giving our welfare much serious thought anyway, preoccupied as they are with their respective political fortunes.

And even if they say they are concerned about the economy, the examples I cited above would probably be useful in gauging how much salt you would need to season such political statements before you gulp them down.

Forgive me for sounding cynical, but I thought a progressive and politically mature Malaysia was what was in the offing from the results of last year’s general election.

I see now that maybe it was just too much too ask.

You and I could be tired of politics, but politicians never are.