COMMENT Whilst the majority of opinion makers have made up their minds that Pakatan Rakyat candidate Anwar Ibrahim will most likely win at Kajang, few have looked at the wider picture of what a loss in Kajang will mean for the BN’s consensual formula for managing Malaysia.

 

Like Pakatan, the BN is a coalition with Umno, the oldest surviving political party in Malaysia, in a leadership position. All ships need captains but in this case, the captain is in a particularly weak condition after having lost the popular vote for the first time since 1957.

 

More importantly, Premier Najib Abdul Razak ( left ) is not even sure if his own party will continue backing him as he tries to push through very unpopular policies.

 

A weak leader notwithstanding, the BN consensus is best demonstrated by way of power sharing. Subsequent to the last general election, Chua Soi Lek made good the MCA's pledge to refuse participation in the government.

 

That is until last Sunday, when the MCA at an EGM voted to overturn its 2011 pledge and will most likely return to government in an expected cabinet reshuffle in the not too distant future.

 

Not everyone is sure that this will bolster the quality of cabinet ministers but obviously the MCA realises the folly of its 2011 decision.

 

The upcoming Kajang by-election will bring into sharp focus both the workings of the BN consensus as well as MCA’s future role in the coalition.

As the deputy prime minister said, the Kajang by-election is a good opportunity to gauge the Chinese community’s support for the MCA and whether some advances can be made to regain that community’s votes.

 

Like everyone else, the deputy prime minister is well aware that the BN candidate will be an underdog and not expected to beat Anwar.

 

All eyes are therefore on the performance of MCA’s Chew Mei Fun. Will she be able to reduce the previous PKR majority?

 

This will be an indicator of whether Malaysians will give the MCA and BN an opportunity to recover. More importantly, it will be a bellwether of the workings of the BN’s consensual politics, which is essentially based upon a particular formula of managing ethnic politics.

 

So, will MCA's decision to return to government reassure the Chinese in Kajang, or inflame them to abandon the party completely, is the measure of the MCA gamble.

 

Anwar must demonstrate prowress

Whilst many of us do not agree with PKR’s strategy or the explanation of its strategist Rafizi Ramli, there is little doubt that for hardcore Pakatan supporters, having Anwar playing an active role in Selangor is something most desirable.

 

More importantly, PKR needs to demonstrate its prowess at state management, something that Anwar cannot claim to be very good at, playing second fiddle to Mahathir during the 1990s.

 

Anwar and PKR needs to showcase a new way of managing ethnic politics that will yield better and more equitable outcomes than the system that we all know is failing us.

 

Whilst ethnic politics and all its challenges have remained, what has changed has to do with the complexity and depth of the challenges we face as a nation.

 

The key question here is whether the BN has reformed enough to be able to spring a surprise at Kajang, attracting new voters and changing minds with an updated formula?

 

That is the real challenge for the MCA going into battle. It might have been able to secure majority support within its own ranks but can this new leadership win actual votes on the ground?

 

Chew ( right ) is no stranger to middle ground politics having won big majorities before the 2008 political tsunami.

After falling out with Chua Soi Lek, she resigned her cabinet position and her post.

 

In the last five years in the wilderness, she has had some opportunity to re-connect with the ground. Of course, there is no way she will ever win a hearing amongst us, readers of Malaysiakini but her experience outside government will be good for the MCA.

 

Pressing issues

In by-elections such as Kajang, both the political coalitions will have an opportunity to revisit their recent general election pledges whilst the voters of Kajang will have a special opportunity to get their message across as well.

 

For the rest of us, we have about a short one week to get some urgent and pressing issues highlighted and hopefully debated by the candidates. Here is my list.

 

One and on the very top of the agenda is leadership. There is a great sense of listlessness in Malaysia with both sides not providing enough leadership.

 

Nobody has really come out with a credible vision of Malaysia five years or ten years down the road? Even less convincing is how that vision will be fulfilled.

 

No politician, who really does very little anyway to earn their huge salaries, is really fulfilling this one career objective.

 

Two is the economy, runaway inflation and issues associated with equitability. Can either candidate tell us how we are to reduce the budget deficit without expanding the tax base?

 

Is BRIM the only answer?  Surely being Santa Claus every time one’s personal popularity takes a dip in the polls cannot be sustainable. In what ways will the Pakatan government be different?

 

Also, can politicians explain all these very complex economic solutions in simple, clear language that everyone can understand?

 

Three is governance or rather the lack of it. Whilst Penang’s Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng ( left ) may be called a ‘tokong’ by his detractors, nobody is in doubt that he makes decisions and that the buck stops with him.

 

Not so the federal government and how the federal government is managed is important in Kajang, which does not have much of an opposition.

 

If BN still does not know how to be constructive governments-in-waiting in Pakatan states, Chew will have to convince us by way of demonstrating how BN can resolve pressing public issues. This may not be a fair challenge but then nothing is fair in a political war.

 

Four, everyone talks about national reconciliation but there is very little concrete action towards national consensus on any subject.

 

We cannot even agree on water, which is affecting us all in Selangor very acutely. Can BN and Pakatan put the people ahead of profits and politics?

 

Forget about resolving man-made problems associated with race and religion, let's work together to deal with the water that will soon run dry in our taps.

 

Can both candidates turn the tables around and come to some agreement about a natural resource that affects us all even beyond this seasonal draught?

 

Five on the agenda although no less important is idealism. Despite being a born cynic, I do believe that our animal spirits is particularly low at the moment.

 

If we are all no longer seeing a positive future as a nation, we are in a very real danger of bringing that hopelessness upon ourselves.

 

Can we have some of Anwar Ibrahim’s legendary charisma turned on to light our future? This fifth element is quite important although it will have little or no impact on the by-election results.

 

All said and done, the Kajang by-election will have very little impact on Pakatan’s state government in Selangor.

It might lead to a change at the helm but Pakatan will still rule Selangor even if it triggers a constitutional crisis and a new round of state elections is conducted.

Like BN, Pakatan is held together by the practical purpose of power.

 

If Pakatan wins convincingly in Kajang and the Pakatan compact remains rock solid, it will be quite difficult to see how any party can prevent Pakatan from nominating its own leader to lead Selangor.

 

Will MCA return to cabinet and government positions if it lost in Kajang? The answer is that it had better get back into cabinet before the by-election results are announced.

 

If it is depending on Chew, then the MCA is less astute politically then even its detractors imagined. This could then very well spark its demise and the end of BN’s consensual formula of managing Malaysia’s complex multi-ethnic challenges.

 

NEIL KHOR completed his PhD at Cambridge University and now writes occasionally on matters that he thinks require better historical treatment. He is quietly optimistic about Malaysia's future.