By P Ramakrishnan
Muhyiddin is a liar and an instigator. He has no leadership qualities. Muhyiddin should not be given the opportunity to be PM
Please spare us the headache and the heartache – don’t appoint Muhyiddin Yassin as the next Prime Minister. We have had enough of him and his bloated cabinet sapping on and draining our economy. His was an almost all-Malay cabinet that didn’t really recognise that this is a plural nation. It was a precedent for our country since Merdeka in 1957. Was he a PM for all Malaysians or only of the Malays?
Muhyiddin is a liar when he recently claimed – falsely, I might add that there is a Jewish-Christian plot to Christianise the country and convert the Malays to Christianity. It was a blatant claim without any shred of evidence to support his allegation. The aim was to frighten the Malays and draw their support for Perikatan Nasional. This was opportunistic politics to serve his self-interest.
It is the “politics of the big lie” delivered almost on the eve of GE15 since I well remember that Hitler’s propaganda minister Josef Goebbels once said that the bigger the lie the more likely it will be accepted as the truth.
Looking at the GE15 election results, we can now probably understand why Perikatan Nasional’s Bersatu and Pas trounced even the once mighty Umno and even Pakatan Harapan’s PKR in so many constituencies.
Moving on, who could ever forget Muhyiddin’s infamous assertion that he was a Malay first, then only a Malaysian? Does one owe one’s loyalty to the nation first or to the community? Does one belong to the nation or one’s community only? The country was not Muhyiddin’s priority when it comes to his communal politics!
Remember also that Muhyiddin was notorious for not respecting family values. He broke up a family by committing adultery with a married woman, purportedly early in his political career when he was the Mentri Besar of Johore. The lawyer-husband sued Muhyiddin for enticing his wife. Can’t recall how this civil suit ended – probably out of court! This episode revealed a total lack of morality in his conduct, causing the subsequent divorce between the husband and wife.
Muhyiddin will be a lame-duck PM with Pas pulling the strings. He will only be a puppet. He has 22 seats whereas Pas has 49 seats. This will mean many more Pas MPs as cabinet ministers who will bring in the Islamic administration into their ministries. There will be a concerted push to bring back the Syaria laws which Muhyiddin will have to give in to in order to stay on as PM.
Against all these, we must weigh what Anwar stands for.
Anwar is the only one not tainted by financial corruption that has ruined this nation. His declared policies are inclusive and fair to the needy of all communities. He respects the plurality make-up of Malaysia and has declared that this nation belongs to all Malaysians. He doesn’t go about thumbing his chest and screaming, “This is Malay land!” As far as he is concerned, this is a country for all.
He is not bound by the failed policies of the BN and he is not obliged to follow them. He is well placed to forge a new direction and implement policies that will rejuvenate the economy and create more jobs and build more flats for the homeless. There will be a curb on corruption, the scourge that has robbed the country of its wealth and filled the pockets of the elite in power.
Anwar has gone through a lot of suffering and has endured a lot of abuse and had been subjected to much smearing and injustice. All this would have made him a better man and a wiser politician to serve the Malaysian public without trampling upon their freedom or denying them the rule of law.
On the record so far, Anwar embodies the promise for a better Malaysia.
He has announced that he will forgo his salary and will halve the salary of his ministers. He has set the tone for an administration that will strive for the welfare of the people. His ministers will work for half the salary as compared to the Pas leader, Hadi, the special envoy with ministerial rank to the Middle East who continues to draw his salary without making any trip or fulfilling his obligations to justify his post and salary.
Anwar deserves this chance to serve the nation and put things right. Only he can bring back the lost shine and make Malaysia great again.
The great thing about Anwar is that he understands and can truly reflect young American actress Constance Wu’s saying that “Public service is about serving all the people, including the ones who are not like you.”
(The views expressed are those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rebuilding Malaysia.)
First published in Aliran on 22 November 2022
P Ramakrishnan is the long-serving former president of Aliran who served three and a half decades on its executive committee, and has been with Aliran since its inception in
Leave a Comment