“The only politician ever to have entered Parliament with honourable intentions, was Guy Fawkes.”

– Terry Deary

COMMENT | With Umno withdrawing support for the Muhyiddin Yassin regime, it remains to be seen how many will heed the call by the Umno supreme council to abandon the ship Umno helped build and sink – or will Umno dissolve into a protracted fight for the political and personal survival of certain personalities in the party?

It is karmic, I suppose, that we are in this mess today because Malaysians for decades did not hold their elected representatives accountable for anything. Umno and Barisan National for decades were voted in legitimately by a majority of Malaysians and Harapan could not even muster the political will to cater to the base even while briefly in power.

This farcical reconvening of Parliament in the odious “hybrid” style is just another banal move by the Malay political establishment to maintain the illusion of a democracy, while the trajectory towards totalitarianism remains the same. Umno supreme council giving the go-ahead for Umno MPs to remain in play until Parliament reconvenes gives mercenary MPs some breathing room, and no doubt, all manner of devious and expensive ploys will be carried by the Malay political establishment.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that Perikatan Nasional (PN) is down for the count. This is mainstream Malaysian politics, which means that there is no ideology beyond its supremacist foundations and grand coalitions are merely made up of people seeking to wrest power from usurpers for agendas that have nothing to do with the concerns of the average rakyat...