COMMENT | Losing electoral power is a hard thing to swallow. Especially if one's brother is also sent packing. That's how badly Anifah Aman got wiped out in the game of thrones on May 9. 

Thus, in his schoolboy attempt to criticise Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah – invariably on the failure of the latter to consult the officers in the Foreign Ministry – on Malaysian foreign policy, he should have looked at his own abject failures first.

The claim that Saifuddin Abdullah is not well-versed in South China Sea issues is hackneyed.

For a good eight years, the administration of then-prime minister Najib Abdul Razak relied on a single expert on the South China Sea between 2009 and 2017, before this person was finally dispatched to France as the Malaysian ambassador.

All this happened before the cataclysmic May 9th general election too, which Najib assumed he would win hands down. One expert to handle South China Sea is both risky and flawed. Yet that was the posture of Najib and Anifah.

Thus, when Anifah recently argued that Saifuddin should have consulted his "officers" in Wisma Putra first, whom he claims are well-versed in foreign policy, one wonders which division was Anifah referring to?

Would these be officials from the bilateral or multilateral division, or, perhaps Ramlan Ibrahim, the secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry himself?

Now, if the issue is Asean, the current director-general for the Asean-Malaysian national secretariat in Wisma Putra is Ahmad Rozian Abd Ghani, who was previously the Malaysian ambassador to Kuwait.

Ahmad Rozian is a sharp and good diplomat, who had served with the UN Refugee Agency too. But so is the deputy secretary-general for the Bilateral Affairs Department of Wisma Putra, Raja Nushirwan Zainal Abidin, who had been previously posted to the UN offices in Geneva and New York.

Saifuddin could not have failed to consult the two gentlemen already. Even in Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail's half-day trip to Jakarta recently, Raja Nushirwan was the one who tagged along.

These are fine officials. Anifah only spoke of the strengths of these officers after he was booted out of office.

If anything, Saifuddin must have done even more. He has perhaps formed a parliamentary select committee to look into the issues of the new Malaysian foreign policy, which is why Saifuddin was not afraid to table the whole motion of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad 's UN speech in Parliament.

Saifuddin does know he can count on the expertise of his top officials, many of whom are familiar with the dynamics in Asean and the Middle East too.

In fact, the last ambassadorial posting of Raja Nushirwan was Iran. Both he and Ahmad Rozian had studied the politics of Palestine, Jordan and Egypt under a United Nations University one-month programme while based in Amman, Jordan in July 1997. One wonders if Anifah had even spent a week in any country with a refugee camp?

Living in a glass house

Indeed, Anifah could not have known all of the above. He lived in his own glass house, confusing the secure and warm shelter of the Foreign Ministry with the stoutness and sturdiness of the world order which is now breaking down.

In fact, be it the South China Sea, or the coast facing Sabah where Anifah hails from, the maritime areas are now marked by piracy, kidnappings, foreign coast guards that anchor and linger in those areas, with all the evidence to show for these inactions, and micro-incursions, invariably, by the Defence Ministry and the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency.

Anifah did nothing during his tenure. Even the 2013 attack on Lahad Datu came during Anifah's watch. Thus it is odd, if not downright peculiar, that it is Anifah who wants to coach Saifuddin.

The fact is Anifah was an abysmal failure as a foreign minister and member of Parliament, which is why his majority continued to slide in the 14th general election, while that of his brother Musa and nephew Yamani Hafez have had nowhere to go except down.

When in a hole, stop digging, of course. When a former foreign minister can't even understand such a simple principle in politics, one wonders how much he can understand foreign affairs, which is a cesspool of endless machinations and intrigues, both literally and metaphorically. It helps if Anifah can showcase what he has achieved before he can critique another incoming foreign minister on the blind too.

PHAR KIM BENG is a multiple award-winning head teaching fellow on China and the Cultural Revolution at Harvard University.

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