LETTER | Former minister Zaid Ibrahim has called on PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin to step down after the results of the Kuala Kubu Baharu (KKB) by-election came out.

I think he has a point.

KKB had around 46 percent Malays, 30 percent Chinese, and 18 percent Indians. Many were unhappy with Pakatan Harapan. PN should not have lost KKB.

Despite that, it was Harapan that came out of KKB with a clear victory.

KKB was not the only time PN, under the leadership of Muhyiddin and Hadi, has been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Remember, it was PN that first had the numbers to form the government at the conclusion of GE15. Despite that, it was Harapan chairperson Anwar Ibrahim and his coalition that managed to sneak up from behind and steal PN’s right to form the government.

I have already said it before that Anwar is not a good leader, he is just fortunate that despite being a lousy leader, he has no challengers. As lousy as he is, Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Muhyiddin, and Hadi are all even worse.

A leader is supposed to do what their title says they should do - they should lead. Reality is always changing and unless we change in accordance, we will be out of sync with reality. The more out of sync with reality we are, the more we will suffer.

To make sure that as an organisation or a nation, we don’t suffer on account of being unable to adapt, we must pick a leader who can move us in such a way that we will be in tune with reality at all times.

Are Muhyiddin and Hadi leaders who keep their respective organisations in tune with the reality of our times?

I think even their supporters will have to admit that the short and simple answer is no.

Opposition has no real plans

If the problem with Anwar is that nobody believes anything that comes out of his mouth, the problem with Muhyiddin and Hadi is that nothing is coming out of their mouths.

We might have serious doubts as to whether Anwar will carry out any of the changes he promised us, but when it comes to Hadi and Muhyiddin, we are not even sure if they intend to bring any changes at all.

The world is on the brink of another great war, the working class in the country have gotten so poor that EPF is forced to introduce the Account 3 initiative so they will have enough to make it to the end of the month, Artificial Intelligence looks like it is going to change the world, Sabah and Sarawak are talking about seceding the federation, the great powers are up to all sorts of shenanigans in the South China Sea, the Parliament is a circus, rule of law is breaking down, and serious people are starting to predict Malaysia is on its way to become a banana republic, but yet Muhyiddin and Hadi do not seem to have any plans to address any of these things.

The problem with Muhyiddin is that he is a manager more than a leader.

The last time he was useful was during the pandemic years, when as the prime minister, he managed to reassure us that despite the great uncertainty that the pandemic has brought us, everything in the country will more or less remain the same under his stewardship.

The problem however is that other than bracing against change, Muhyiddin doesn’t seem to have any idea as to how to keep in tune with changes. Even his leadership as the opposition leader can at best be described as an act of bracing against reality.

In other words, as the opposition leader, Muhyiddin has never taken any serious initiative to challenge the government. This is even though the leadership of Anwar and the Madani government is so riddled with flaws and shortcomings, that Muhyiddin had numerous opportunities since 2022 to seriously challenge the government.

If Muhyiddin has made any moves at all against the government, it is often Anwar who was the initiator of his action. As a rule of thumb, it is usually Anwar that will prompt the opposition to make a move by initiating an action against them. In return, all that Muhyiddin will do as the opposition leader is either brace against Anwar’s action or react against it.

If it is bad enough that Muhyiddin only knows how to brace and react against Anwar’s initiative, Hadi is even worse.

PAS under Hadi is clueless

PAS, for all intents and purposes, just represents the inertial force of Malay politics. Whenever PAS is doing well, it basically means the Malays are afraid of change, and if there is one sort of change Malays are particularly afraid of, it is the one where they believe they will lose power to exploitative elites from another race.

The Malays might grumble at being exploited by the exploitative elites of their own race, but they are absolutely allergic to being exploited by the exploitative elites of other races.

PAS is currently the biggest single party in the country not because of its own merits, but because the Malays are currently very afraid that with DAP being the biggest party in the ruling coalition, they are getting close to a situation where they will become so powerless, that they will end up being exploited by the exploitative elites of another race.

It is on account of this fear that they have shifted their support to PAS, not because they have any faith in PAS’s ability to keep track of the changing reality.

Under the leadership of Hadi, PAS is absolutely hopeless in dealing with changes or keeping in tune with reality. The only thing that PAS under Hadi knows is to use the fear that the Malays have against DAP to get the Malays to back PAS.

Once the Malays back PAS however, the party doesn’t know what to do with their backing. PAS under Hadi has no plans or direction or future for the Malays, let alone the non-Malays in the country.

PAS under Hadi is so clueless, it doesn’t even know what to do to go against the exploitative elites from the other races that the Malays are hoping it will protect them against.

Some of the moves against the exploitative elites in the country, seen through such actions as the boycott against KFC, McDonald’s, Starbucks, or KK Mart, did not even originate from PAS, although all of these boycotts have a religious basis underlying it, which is supposed to be a field where PAS holds sway.

KFC recently closed 100-plus of its outlets before letting go of its staff, most of whom are Malays. Did PAS do anything to get these laid-off KFC staff proper compensation? I bet the answer is no.

Despite most of the KFC staff being Malays, and despite the fact that it is precisely to protect them from the exploitative elites from other races that PAS has been getting the support of the Malays, PAS probably has done absolutely nothing to secure the rights and welfare of the KFC staff against an exploitative elite that used and discarded them at its pleasure.

Why? Well, the short and simple answer is that PAS under Hadi simply doesn’t know how to do any of these things. It just doesn’t have the capacity to imagine, let alone do something like demand that KFC makes sure that the staff that it lets go get at least six months worth of salary for being terminated due to a fault not of their own.

PN needs to get its act together

Zaid is absolutely right. Muhyiddin and Hadi need to step down.

PN needs leadership that has a plan and a vision not only for their respective political parties, but for the country. If even the Muslims, as can be seen in the KKB by-election results, can’t accept a PN that has no way forward, what more the non-Muslims?

If PN has leadership that has the imagination to come up with a way forward, who knows, maybe PN will get the support of non-Muslims too, even if the non-Muslims are not too overjoyed with the overly racial and religious angle that PN is promoting.

It might be our culture to respect the elders, but our elders are also supposed to be wise and selfless people, who can look beyond their own self-interest and work for the sake of the greater good.

If Muhyiddin and Hadi are wise, they should see it is not in the interest of PN or the country to have them leading it.

If they can’t see, they should rightfully be called old people, not elders.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

Please join the Malaysiakini WhatsApp Channel to get the latest news and views that matter.