Dr M's unseat Najib formula too self-serving
COMMENT There is presently a stalemate in which elements on both sides of the political divide in the country want Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak unseated over his failure to come clean on the 1MDB imbroglio.
COMMENT There is presently a stalemate in which elements on both sides of the political divide in the country want Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak unseated over his failure to come clean on the 1MDB imbroglio.
On their own, this alarm over what is happening to the country is not strong enough to shift the PM, but in concert it has the potential to democratically show him the door.
Their collaboration depends on whether they recognise the danger the PM poses to the country’s residual and weakened trammels against despotism in this Najib’s moment of simultaneous awareness of grave peril to him and great temptation to ward it off through repression.
This recognition should engender a mature cooperation leading to the formation of an interim government of national untiy before the next general election which is about 33 months down the road.
There is a ready candidate to lead this government in Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who has the experience to handle the economic complexities of our present predicament and the ability to draw support from both sides of the political divide and also from such concerned institutions as royalty.
Upon the glue he could provide by experience and stature, there is the matrix for a government of national unity that must restore derelict institutions of state to their former health.
This is the more viable way out of the current stalemate where elements on both sides of the political divide are convinced that Najib has not furnished satisfactory answers to the 1MBD caper and the depths to which he will be tempted to sink if not checked by the exercise of parliamentary methods for his removal.
The formula suggested by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad ( photo ) that the opposition cooperate with dissenters in the Umno-BN camp to remove Najib as PM while the BN stays in power is too self-serving to succeed.
To garner the collaboration of the opposition composed of DAP, PKR and PAS for a no-confidence motion against Najib would require the formation of an interim government of national unity focused on tackling a sputtering economy and restoring institutional health.
The person equipped by experience and stature to effect both these goals if the Umno MP for Gua Musang, Razaleigh.
He is not the panacea for all the ills of our polity but he is the go-to leader that Najib naysayers on both sides of the political divide can rally around for the twin tasks of economic and institutional restoration.
Reduction of political partisanship
This way out of the current stalemate will result in a reduction of political partisanship and the noxious fumes it radiates.
It will enable a better quality to the debate over the composition of a core curriculum by which Malaysia’s young are to be educated for the future.
Absent a core curriculum, the country’s young will steer by compasses of sundry making, with the result that there will not be a sense of common citizenship and destiny.
The composition of a core curriculum if accompanied by a restoration of institutions like the judiciary, police force and civil service to something like proper health, will aid and abet the crystallisation of the debate on a core curriculum.
Also, a reduction in the political partisanship consequent to the formation of a government of national unity will help the process.
Ths debate will possibly take longer that it will take the interim government of national unity to tackle our economic and institutional problems to the next general election in about 33 months’ time.
The debate can continue under whichever coalition is empowered to lead at GE14.
A government of national unity under Razaleigh will create a more bracing climate for lifting the country above the quiddities of race and religion around which the national debate has so obsessively revolved.
It will help defuse the toxins and spawn a better climate for the campaigning that political parties will engage over an appropriately sufficient period on the hustings for their candidates.
A maturer debate and contestation can be reasonably expected and a more informed choice made by the electorate at the next polls.
The upshot: better empowerment for the winners from greater clarity to their visions and more savvy for their steering to enunciated goals.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.
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