COMMENT The Kajang Move has come to a close, whether or not the Selangor crisis continues.

 

The outcome has caused many to deride Anwar Ibrahim and Rafizi Ramli for making their own worst nightmare a reality - the ascendancy of the individual most likely to end their political careers.

 

I think this is not however the time to gloat or kick people when they are down. Whatever their mistakes, including the ones that led directly to their own downfall, there is no doubt that Anwar and team have played a significant role in Malaysian politics.

 

I think the wiser thing to do at this point is reflect on the Kajang Move as a whole, and try our best to learn the lessons that it teaches.

 

For many no doubt, hearing me say any more about this will make ears bleed; rest assured that I too feel like saying much more of it will make me choke blood.

 

Nevertheless, hopefully circumstances will permit this to be a final (albeit agonisingly four part) retrospective, following which I hope to partake of the bliss of relative indifference to Selangor politics for a little while at least.

 

Today’s article will focus on political cause and consequence in the Kajang Move, for Anwar, his inner circle, and for PKR. I will focus on why the launched the Kajang Move, and the three main lessons we should all try to learn from the episode.

 

The next two articles will examine questions of consistency and proper procedure throughout the crisis, and the last will be a more personal reflection on Khalid Ibrahim’s legacy.

 

Leadership vacuum post GE13  

Before we can learn the lessons of the Kajang Move, it is helpful to understand why and how it came about. Obviously, the following merely represents my opinion.

 

The problem starts with GE 13. Despite by far the most electoral excitement in my generation, Pakatan Rakyat improved its performance by only 3 percent of the total seats in parliament (it’s all about the rural bottleneck ). As an aside, Selangor under Khalid ( left ) increased its seats by 14 percent.

 

Worse, in Malaysia’s flawed democracy, there is very little of significance to get excited about in between general elections.

 

Given the disempowering, disenfranchising nature of the system, most opposition politicians have little to no avenues to significantly impact the course of politics in between elections.

 

This is the scenario Anwar faced when people started losing interest in the somewhat aimless Black 505 rallies post GE13. His relevance faded more and more with each passing month.

 

With no relevance or place in the headlines, someone in Anwar’s position would also be hard pressed to find big financiers. Who wants to spend big money on a man no one is talking about, and who has no ability to influence the awarding of contracts and such (something Khalid Ibrahim made sure of)?

 

Destroy feudal pyramid, not climb to top

 

Anwar believes in replacing Umno, but not necessarily in replacing its culture of feudal politics.

 

Where individuals like Khalid believe in destroying the pyramid of feudal power, individuals like Anwar and Azmin Ali believe that it cannot be destroyed - it can only be conquered by rising to the top.

 

The only two currencies in feudalism are money and power, and they are generally interchangeable - certainly, within the feudal framework, you can’t have one without the other.

 

I think Anwar and team truly believed that it was impossible for their political careers to progress without financial resources, positions of power to distribute, and a high profile platform to be in the news all the time.

 

Virtually unrestricted access to the state's RM 3 billion reserves would imaginably be reason enough to rock the boat and go for the menteri besar’s post.

 

Lesson 1: No short cuts  

Having understood the reasons behind the Kajang Move, let us now move to what I believe are the three main lessons those of us who look to shape a better Malaysia should learn from this entire episode.

 

Firstly, no short cuts.

 

There is no short cut to becoming the menteri besar. The best way and time to change a chief executive is when you expressly state that he or she is the candidate for that post during a general election.

 

There is no short cut to effective leadership of a coalition. If you want to execute a plan that involves everyone, then it is imperative that you build true consensus and persuade every single member of the coalition involved before you launch the move, not try to bulldoze your way after.

 

There is no short cut to Putrajaya. The only way to win Putrajaya is to have a cohesive, effective and successful rural strategy. Neither bribes and crossovers, nor flashy, ill thought out political gambits, are the answer.

 

Even though the system is stacked against the opposition, we need to be creative in finding ways to make proper, ethical and effective use of what is essentially political downtime.

 

Finally, there is no short cut to gaining public support. I think that as the Kajang Move was planned, its planners thought to themselves: even though some of the public may find all this very strange, surely we can persuade them to go along by convincing them that they have to continue supporting us no matter what, as we are the only viable alternative to Umno.

 

I think it is wrong to always take public support for granted, especially by attempting to exploit widespread hatred against Umno and trying to turn it into blind loyalty. Moving forward, it is imperative that we understand that being an alternative to Umno does not give us license to behave like Umno in any way.

 

Lesson 2: Reject feudalism  

The second, and perhaps most important lesson is: you cannot defeat feudalism with feudalism.

 

As long as you live by and employ the culture and strategies of feudalism, then the game will always be won by the strongest feudal lords.

 

The hierarchy of feudal lords is basically that Umno is stronger than PKR, and Azmin is clearly stronger than Anwar.

 

Khalid tried to run Selangor in a way that would smash feudal structures. In terms of dominant political culture in Malaysia however, he fought the law, and the law won.

 

In the long run, we must remember that beating feudalism will require political/campaign finance reform.

 

In the short run, the rule of thumb simply is, do not behave like your enemies (especially in terms of how they get money) to beat your enemies. To achieve that will require some serious thinking outside the box, but I truly believe Malaysians are equal to that task.

 

Lesson 3: The dog and the bone  

The third lesson can perhaps best be illustrated via analogy.

 

The first analogy I used to describe this was Aesop’s fable of the dog and the bone. A dog is walking across a bridge holding a bone in his mouth; he sees his reflection in the river below, assumes that it is another dog with a bone, then opens his mouth to try and get the “other dog’s” bone, losing his original bone in the process.

 

The more I thought about it, the less I could help thinking that perhaps a more apt - but decidedly more crude (my profuse apologies) - analogy would be a dog that came out of a safe hiding space to bone another dog, only to then find its now vulnerable self boned from behind by a bigger, meaner dog instead.

 

The painful irony of course is that just as Barisan Nasional tried for six years to sow discord in Pakatan Rakyat but failed until the Kajang Move, Azmin tried for six years to become menteri besar but failed until the Kajang Move.

 

No matter how strong Azmin is - and he is quite strong - he would never have gotten his foot through the menteri besar’s door if Anwar and Rafizi had not opened it for him.

 

Reaching greedily for that illusory bone, Anwar and team are sadly now much, much worse off than when they began.

 

Impending purge  

There will likely be a quiet, slow, but inevitable purge, as the likes of Nurul Izzah Anwar, Rafizi, Saifuddin Nasution and so on are eventually isolated and made irrelevant. Even Anwar himself now has no real leverage over Azmin whatsoever, especially in the long term.

 

In terms of resources, these individuals are now packing less than a knife even, in the gunfight of PKR’s feudal politics. Anwar now represents the old, powerless  and fading, while Azmin represents the new, the powerful and the rising.

 

For Anwar loyalists, the only other option of course, is to follow the lead of some in Selangor - suck it up, bend the knee and swear fealty to the new king.

 

PKR lost its best chance of moving away from such feudal politics when Anwar ran Saifuddin as a third corner deputy president candidate, and when PKR formally announced that Wan Azizah Wan Ismail was their new candidate for menteri besar.

 

Azmin reminds me of Frank Underwood of House of Cards, or Tom Kane of Boss - both men who crushed their enemies mercilessly and ruled with an iron fist (the former’s rise to power after being snubbed by his president is particularly reminiscent).

 

Under Azmin’s strong-armed rule, we can expect PKR and possibly even Pakatan Rakyat to consolidate and strengthen, in terms of political force.

 

Whatever it gains there though, it will likely lose in terms of principles and integrity. While Pakatan’s odds of beating Barisan Nasional may have gone up, so have the odds of putting old wine into new bottles.

 

Never has Malaysia faced a more likely Animal Farm like prospect, where the once oppressed become more and more indistinguishable from their once oppressors. With the new king, we cannot even discount at this point the possibility of PKR and Selangor going the way of Gerakan and Penang in 1973.

 

While all this unfolds, Anwar and team will begin their long and painful exile, I can only offer heartfelt condolences. I really wish it had all been otherwise.

 

Tomorrow: How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

NATHANIEL TAN is now trying to ‘insaf dan bertaubat’ by replacing his King Julian writing style with something less emotional and more mature. This includes his tweets @NatAsas i.