If I Were The King

KL, 15 Aug: So I started this new weekly column for The Mole this morning, just before Muhyiddin Yasin sat down for his longest 30 minutes with the Yang DiPertuan Agong. Wanted to call the column Monday Blues but the editor probably misheard me and named it Monday Bru. Just as well, for I certainly didn't get the blues today ...

If I Were The King ...

MONDAY BRU  with Ahirudin Attan

August 15 2021

IF Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin sends in his resignation today, the Yang DiPertuan Agong will once again have the task of choosing a new Prime Minister from among the MPs. 

Yes, this won’t be the first time for this King. Neither will it be any less daunting.

One thing for sure, keen followers of Malaysian politics agree, Tuanku Al-Sultan Abdullah Alhaj would want to do things differently from March last year, when he made Muhyiddin the Prime Minister after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad suddenly resigned.

The whole country is wondering what the King would do. 

Well. If I were the King, I would make sure, first and foremost,  to remind everyone about the Rakyat’s mandate. 

In the historic 14th General Election of 2018, the people voted in Pakatan Harapan.  Dr Mahathir became PM with the promise of passing the baton on to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim after two years or so.

That never happened. What happened, instead, was the so-called Sheraton Move where Muhyiddin, helped by Umno that had lost the GE, slipped in through the backdoor and became the eighth Prime Minister in March last year.

If I were the King, here is an opportunity to return to Pakatan Harapan the people’s mandate to govern for five years or until the 15th GE is called.

The leader of the Pakatan Harapan is Anwar Ibrahim. He is the Opposition leader and he commands the biggest single bloc in Parliament. He was the first to come to Agong’s defence when Muhyiddin and his Cabinet ministers stood in defiance against the Palace.

Together with the 15 Umno MPs who pulled out their support for Muhyiddin following the face-off with the Istana, the King can easily determine that Anwar commands the majority support of Parliament.

If I were the King, I will make sure Anwar …

1. Onboard Ku Li as Adviser or Mentor Minister in his new Government

2. Appoint a second Deputy PM from Sabah/Sarawak

3. Keep out MPs who are still facing charges in the court or who whose cases were mysteriously taken off by the Pakatan Harapan government after it came to power in 2018. 

4. Include DAP in the Cabinet (because MCA is dead and Anwar is the only Malay leader who commands genuine respect from these DAPsters) BUT prohibit them from going on a witch-hunt the way some DAP strongmen, placed by Dr Mahathir in powerful places within his Administration, had gone after their or their party’s enemies 

5. Make good your (Anwar’s) pledge to ditch politics of revenge

6. Get all existing Ministers, Deputy Ministers and GLC political appointees to resign so as to allow the Interim PM to retain the ones who have been performing and bring back the professionals to the GLCs

7. Give full support to the Undi 18 initiative. by bringing in young blood to the Cabinet or government institutions and GLCs. In this context, limit the age limit of the Cabinet to 80 (with the exception of the Mentor Minister)

… If I were the King.

But, before anyone gets unnecessarily excited, I am not the King and I will never be King. In the King, however, we put our trust. And in God, our prayers for this nation.

Read also: Shortest-serving PM: A timeline of the Muhyiddin Administration's fall

King may consider interim government after Muhyiddin resigns tomorrow (Why none of the current Cabinet Ministers should be considered for the top post)

Now every clown thinks he can be Prime Minister 

Nazri signs SD supporting Ismail Sabri as PM, urges other Umno MPs to do likewise

KL, 15 Aug. - As I see it, there's no other way. If the Agong is really dead against making Anwar Ibrahim the Prime Minister after Muhyiddin Yasin steps down tomorrow, interim government is his only option. Promoting anyone from the current failed Cabinet to replace Muhyiddin is simply unthinkable, unacceptable.

Okay, why did I mention Anwar in the opening line of this posting? Because the mandate from the voters in 2018, when PH defeated BN in that historic general election, was to have made Anwar the PM after Mahathir Mohamad's two-year "interim" premiership. Well, that didn't happen as planned and we know why. The Sheraton Move happened and here we are in this sorry, sorry state with hundreds of people dying from Covid-19 everyday and hope flickering by the minute. 

But while he can morally claim to have the mandate, Anwar obviously doesn't have enough numbers. PN, by Muhyiddin's own reluctant admission, doesn't have the numbers (probably never had the numbers from the start). Nobody has the numbers. Ku Li's name has been bandied about only because he is "liked" by the Istana but he certainly does not have the numbers (heck, he did not even have enough within Umno to threaten Khairy Jamaluddin, let alone Zahid Hamidi, in the last party election!). 

Still, the King must choose an MP who, in his opinion, commands the majority legislative support to be the new PM. Tough, tough call. But in the King we place our trust and hope during this very trying times. 

Whatever happens in the coming few days, let's not the clowns think that just anyone can be Prime Minister of this country. And by anyone I mean especially those from the current crop of Cabinet Ministers who had stood with Muhyiddin in the past weeks in defiance against the Agong. 

Wither Malaysia if Muhyiddin resigns?

 

"If I resign, my whole Government resigns." - PM Muhyiddin aka Mahiaddin Yasin, Friday the 13th

Kuala Lumpur, 14 Aug: Muhyiddin Yasin's script writers must have meant it to sound like a huge threat: if the PM resigns, his whole Cabinet will go with him and this nation will then be plunged into pitch darkness. Unfortunately (for Muhyiddin), most Malaysians, judging from the response we've seen in the media, see it as the light at the end of the tunnel. The answer to their prayers for better things. "Please resign ... and allow democracy to heal in Malaysia," says scientist Dr Noraishah Abd Aziz on twitter.  Muhyiddin's resignation will put an end to the unprecedented face-off between the PM and the Yang DiPertuan Agong. It would be "the noblest thing" Muhyiddin could do, says senjakala @YunusZolkefle in response to a question I posed on my latest tweet. 

With the exception of a few like Tony Pua, our learned netizens view the PM's address yesterday not suspicion but with contempt. They saw an attempt to stay in power, by hook or by crook. Within the Palace, there's a view that yesterday's address was a blatant attempt by a PM who had lost his majority to keep power by trying to bribe MPs to go against the King. 

Muhyiddin's detractors have been having a field day, thanks to his scrip t writers' gaffe. "Daylight bribery," screams TPJ, a former ADUN, on his Instagram. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim says yesterday's speech was a confession that Muhyiddin's government has lost majority legislative support and is, therefore, obliged to resign. Former PM Najib Razak calls for calm, for the people to allow the King to do his thing when Muhyiddin goes to the Palace on Monday for an audience with him. 

And that's exactly what we should do. Stay calm because our prayers are about to be answered. And please, the Government won't just vanish if the Prime Minister resigns. That never happens. For the script writers to make Muhyiddin go on record to say that it would just shows how failed they all are.

Read: Muhyiddin to meet Agong on Monday - Malaysiakini///Anyone but you, Abah by Terence Fernandez

But, oh great deja vu, these two met!

It's best I keep my thoughts to myself, for now at least. 

KL, Aug 2: Malaysian political heavyweights Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim put aside long-running animosity and joined an opposition protest Monday against the shutdown of Parliament and demand the country's embattled premier resign.

The final day of a parliamentary session, due to take place Monday, has been canceled after the discovery of several COVID-19 cases in the legislature.

But rivals accused Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin of using COVID-19 as an excuse to dodge a no-confidence vote that could cause the collapse of his crisis-hit government. --- Read more HERE