Musa Hitam Hits The Nail On The Head

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If lesser lights say it, it wouldn't have much traction.
But if it comes from what arguably is the best prime minister Malaysia never had, then perhaps enough people will sit up and take note.
Former deputy prime minister Musa Hitam (above) has lambasted current Malaysian politics as a joke because he says it is void of ideology or philosophy.
In an interview with Mingguan Malaysia, Musa said that these days political leaders are more concerned with which party has more seats and who is siding with who than with the ideological and philosophical leanings of individual politicians.
As a consequence, he says the country has far too many defectors and he speculates that the inducements offered to party hoppers are no longer piddling sums, as was the case in times before.
“People on this side will jump to the other side, and that is the only issue,” lamented Musa in remarks carried by the weekend edition of Utusan Malaysia.
In recent weeks the defection of two PKR MPs, Larry Sng of Julau and Steven Choong of Tebrau, from the opposition benches to the ranks of independents pledging support for the government of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has renewed public clamour for an anti-party hopping law.

Tebrau MP Steven Choong and Julau MP Larry Sng.
Longstanding public loathing for politicians who change affiliation after being elected on their former party's platform is apparently unassuageable: A law barring party hopping would run afoul of constitutional guarantees of freedom of association.
In a long political career in Umno that was marked by departures from party orthodoxy, Musa has not availed himself of the freedom to freely associate.
Hence his criticism of the surge in political defections and his opinion that it makes a farce of Malaysian politics enjoys great pith and moment.
By holding forth on the subject, Musa has not only broken his silence on political developments in the country – a silence that may be owed to a bout of ill-health – the now 86-yer-old Musa is actually dilating on themes he has raised in the not-too-distant past.
In September 2007, while speaking at a book launch ceremony in Kuala Lumpur, Musa referred to the changing ethos of politics from the time he started out in the arena in the late 1960s.
He said that when he first plunged into politics the question that his seniors in the game wanted to know about a newbie were conveyed by the following inquiries – “Can he work? Will he be able to deliver?”
Over time, observed Musa, the tenor of the questions posed of a neophyte shifted to reflect anxiety about his political allegiances – “Is he one of us? Can we trust him?”
Musa said this shift in inquisitorial nuance boded ill for the whole question of individual ability.
He said it was then that questions about an individual's capacity for loyalty took precedence over the ability to deliver. Soon loyalty became the refuge of the mediocre.

PKR president Anwar Ibrahim and former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In his remarks to Mingguan Malaysia, Musa attributed the void in ideology in Malaysian politics to the obsession with the numbers game – Which party has how many MPs? – that he said warps the leadership of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar Ibrahim and Muhyiddin.
He apportions blame for the malady of ideology-void politics equally among its central players.
Both Anwar and Muhyiddin were beneficiaries of the loyalty test that Mahathir applied to Umno leaders in the aftermath of the seminal contest for the presidency of the party in April 1987 between Mahathir and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
The mediocritisation of Umno began when that loyalty test was remorselessly applied by Mahathir after he narrowly defeated Razaleigh.
Its denouement is our current political landscape, which is peopled by insipid operatives driven wholly by self-interest, without any tincture of ideology.
Musa is right to pronounce the scene a joke. 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. - Mkini

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

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