COMMENT For some years now, Umno’s Saifuddin Abdullah had lifted anchor and floated intriguingly in the political spaces that were once inhabited by the liberals of his party.

Broadly, those liberals could be described as politicians who would not allow their racial identity to overshadow their Malaysian one.

It was a tough balancing act and there weren’t many who could bring it off but that some of them could did sustain the hope that such a type was possible - and what’s more - viable.

These politicians were chiefly from Johor, the birthplace of Umno, the state’s proximity to Singapore exposing it to the cosmopolitan winds that possibly aided the nurture of the plural personality.

Saifuddin appeared in a direct line of descent from these types, he being from Pahang creating a bit of a surprise because the state, unlike Johor, was not known to be a hatchery for the pluralistic pol.

But a more than cursory survey of Pahang’s political history, the fact that it has produced writers and activists like Ishak Haji Muhammad and Keris Mas - people who fused their desire for Malay advancement within a corporate Malaysian identity - would help explain the emergence of someone like Saifuddin as not exactly exceptional.

Having emerged then, it remained to be seen whether this Umno man of liberal instincts would be able to survive and rise within a set-up that was increasingly inward-looking.

Something of an answer to that critical question was found in Saifuddin’s defeat in his Temerloh parliamentary constituency in the 2013 general election and his failure to gain a seat in Umno’s top policy-making body later that year.

Both setbacks could be attributed to not only the disappearance of the liberals within Umno but also to mounting aversion in the party to them and the dominance of a right wing more intent on navel gazing than in engaging with the realities of a globalising world.

Still, there was cause to persevere in his ties to Umno because of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s penchant for nurturing an image of himself as a purveyor of moderation, not only in the country but also in the wider international community.

So, in spite of his defeats, Saifuddin was appointed to head the Global Movement for Moderates (GMM), the nongovernmental body that Najib feels inclined to nurture and sustain if only as an available option for use when the tides shift in favour of the moderates in politics at home and abroad.

Najib must have been hoping for this shift to occur but, in the meantime, it appeared he would do little or nothing as PM to steer things in the direction of moderation.

Not believing in leading from the front

Najib does not believe in leading from the front, in taking people from where they are to where he wants them to be.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and so the PM soon found that his occasional sound bites for moderation, in councils abroad than at home, were insufficient to create any shift in that direction.

Saifuddin, however, by dint of his amenable personality, proved useful for the PM as head of GMM: his presence gave the NGO more than a veneer of credibility.

But GMM’s reason for existence has undermined by the events of the last few weeks when the red-shirt rally of Sept 16, organised by people associated with Umno’s right wing, exposed as threadbare Najib’s credentials as a moderate.

This has put Saifuddin’s position as an authentic facilitator of the moderate consensus in Malaysian public affairs under great strain, with the result that he had taken a step that has placed him in a precarious position vis-a-vis Umno.

Safuddin’s attendance at the roundtable discussion that led to the formation of a new opposition coalition in Pakatan Harapan has inevitably imperilled his bona fides as an Umno member.

He is under disciplinary duress which he should recognise as a prelude to getting out of the party from the simple fact that his political outlook is no longer tenable.

Umno is under great strain from the 1MDB imbroglio; it comes as no surprise that despite his good ties to Najib, Saifuddin is on the opposite of the issue to the PM’s.

That makes Saifuddin’s position in Umno well-nigh untenable and helps explain his presence at the roundtable discussion that led to the formation of Pakatan Harapan.

He has no place in Umno but that does not mean he should join one of the components of Pakatan Harapan; joining will expose him to the charge of being a traitor.

Instead Saifuddin will get into a holding pattern that could well become a gathering point for BN politicians who are discontented with the PM’s handling of the 1MDB affair.

A perceptibly growing number are disgruntled. Isn’t it too much to envisage that they would want to bolt the BN stable?

This lot may prefer to make common cause with Saifuddin rather than enlist outright with one or the other of the Pakatan Harapan components.

Therein Saifuddin could be the focal point for the formation of a BN splinter party, which will be regarded as yet another phase in the shrivelling of the once invulnerable ruling coalition and the consequent strengthening of the opposition.

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.