A small but significant news item from Sabah last week tells us everything we need to know about the high price Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim could pay for the secret deals he hopes will hand him his long-awaited chance at forming the Government after GE13.
Fourteen Sabah Wanita PKR members, including vice-chairman of the state chapter, Winnie Juani, quit en masse after discovering that state and federal seats they thought were to be allocated to female PKR candidates have been handed over to Angkatan Perubahan Sabah and Pertubuhan Pakatan Perubahan Sabah, the two parties Anwar inherited when he recruited defectors Wilfred Bumburing, (APS) and Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin (PPPS) last year.
Juani put a brave face on her action, saying she was quitting to “take a rest” but it soon became known she was furious at having lost her chance to contest the state seat of Moyog, one of the many seats Anwar must now hand over as payment for his recruits’ “loyalty”. In many ways, Juani’s dignity in the face of Anwar’s betrayal only highlights the injustice of this act.
It also exposes the huge flaw in Anwar’s strategy. He foolishly announced the capture of Bumburing and Lajim last year before he had completed the serious discussions about what their demands would be. That meant they had him over a barrel and if these 14 resignations are anything to go by, they have been able to extort from him more seats than his own party had hoped to give away.
It is the same story with his SAPP quest. Anwar talked up the alliance with the party before they had discussed terms, leading to the very public schism and collapse of the deal last week. SAPP wanted 40 out of 60 state seats, Anwar said the party wasn’t as “formidable” as it thought it was, and that was the end of that.
The common denominator here is of course, Anwar and his flawed character. He loves doing dodgy deals that he believes might hand him Putrajaya without having to do anything as old-fashioned as win over voters by articulating policies. But despite holding secret meetings in back rooms, in his desire to crow about his coup, he inevitably goes public before the details have been ironed out. This is why his prized Sabah strategy of 2012 became the Sabah fiasco of 2013.
There is another issue that has been exposed here that needs addressing. BN President Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced midway through last year that BN’s war room will ensure half the candidates will be under 50 and there will be a lot more women on the candidate lists for GE13. Anwar has made only vague noises about the need for more women, but what sort of a message does it send out when 14 women stomp out of the party in a state of high dudgeon?
Notice too that while there is public discussion about who gets how many seats, there is nothing said about ideological common ground. How do we, or even Anwar know that the parties he is courting actually agree with what Pakatan Rakyat stands for? An observer of the Opposition would know that these alliances can’t be based on common policies because Anwar is loath to articulate any. So what happens the first time an issue comes up with which APS or PPPS disagree? Anwar’s deals are valid only until the first such division. After that, self-interest will reign supreme.
The problem with these alliances, like Pakatan Rakyat itself, is that they are based only on a desire to get rid of BN. That means the moment Pakatan and its new best friends actually win the election, the one factor that unites them will be redundant. And having lost their common purpose, they don’t have a chance of dividing up portfolios, agreeing long term strategies, and governing in peace and harmony.
The contrast between Anwar’s whispered deals and BN’s open approach couldn’t be more stark. Sure, Najib hasn’t yet showed his hand. But he has had his candidate list vetted by the MACC, has urged all passed-over candidates to do the right thing and not sabotage their party and has vowed to field more women and younger candidates.
And he has also ended up beholden to no one. No parties have Najib in a corner, extorting concessions from him at the expense of those who have been loyal to the cause from the beginning. The issue of secret deals and subsequent debts is another reason to think hard about who to elect at GE13.