He could not believe what happened.
His leadership credibility was at stake and his earlier positive performance was neutralised.
Unethical Mahathir
Mahathir then had to embark on a massive bailout plan to rescue his family and cronies’ business empire from collapsing by injecting billions of ringgit in public funds into their business entities .
Mahathir’s unethical and corrupt acts provided the right opportunity and justification for the Anwar faction in Umno and the government to make their move to oust Mahathir from power.
Anwar was at that time the deputy prime minister.
While Anwar flexed his muscles, Mahathir pressed all sorts of power buttons at his disposal.
Mahathir had gone through a number of challenges before that had rattled him.
But Anwar was the biggest challenge in his political career. So Mahathir had to take an extreme measure to save himself and his interests.
He chose to press the megawatt button that would paralyse his adversary.
Now Najib Tun Razak, who was then the defence minister, had his own gameplan.
He chose Mahathir over Anwar because Mahathir was getting old and sooner or later he would have to step down while Anwar was younger and if he had won, would have become the prime minister for a long time.
Najib placed his bets well.
Najib’s psy-war
True to his analysis, this master of psychlogical war let the two fight it out, with Mahathir emerging the victor.
However, by 2003 Mahathir had to bow out due to intense pressure.
The Anwar-Mahathir political crisis which culminated in the 1998 showdown was essentially a power struggle for the Umno presidency and the premiership.
At that time, though Mahathir was shattered by the financial crisis, he still held so much economic and political power which he had acquired through the undemocratic-dictatorial rule involving unethical practices and abuses of power.
No dictator who had grabbed so much power like Mahathir was willing to surrender it easily to any one. Whoever was the No 2 man had to wait.
Opportunities to grab power and holding on to power itself are two different things.
With supreme authority in his hands, Mahathir easily checkmated Anwar’s coup d’etat attempt.
When Anwar failed in his personal objective to topple Mahathir – and instead was himself toppled – he lost everything.
He looked to the opposition leaders to achieve his goal.
Naturally when Anwar teamed up with the opposition parties, his struggle would broaden to include their causes and they reciprocated by accepting his personal agenda plan.
So in the case of Anwar’s struggle it is the personal objective first rather than the cause.
Hence from the beginning Anwar’s struggle was not on the right track.
Pakatan – a marriage of ’causes’
The opposition parties, meanwhile, had their own respective cause.
DAP wants more justice and fairness in government policies in relation to the Chinese community. It wants real democracy and good governance.
PAS wants Islam to play a major role in government policies and practices.
Both share the same objectives which is to ensure the government heed their causes, besides trying to have more representation in Parliament. They did not neccesarily desire to see a change in government.
Both parties’ causes and objectives were consistent throughout their struggle.
Hence Pakatan Rakyat’s struggle is Anwar’s personal objective intertwined with DAP and PAS party struggle .
Such a political marriage breeds a unique kind of leadership in the coalition where Anwar provides the sole leadership to DAP and PAS.
After his release in September 2004, Anwar went on to lead the opposition to an unprecedented success in the 2008 general election.
His Pakatan coalition – DAP, PKR and PAS – won 82 seats against Barisan Nasional’s 140.
Anwar’s sole leadership played a major role not only to thrust his own party, PKR, forward but also that of the coalition partners PAS and DAP.
Mahathir’s cause was ‘personal power’
Umno originally had a good cause and its objectives were consistent until 1981.
But since then the new leaders, especially Mahathir and Najib, strayed from its original struggle.
Firstly, a believer of undemocratic or dictatorial doctrine no doubt has its own goals. His is a form of pursuit which is devoid of a true cause.
Even if Mahathir-Najib believed they had a cause, it was not in the interest of the rakyat.
Their cause was about the struggle for political power to usurp through unethical means, which simply implies greed.
An undemocratic or dictatorial pursuit is associated with greed, and greed is one of the traits of evilness.
Hence in their pursuit they can only see things according to their set of bad values by looking straight ahead without looking back at the trails they leave behind.
The Quran tells us to look at the trails that you leave behind that will form one of the basis used to judge your actions .
A person will look at the trails of his enemy to track him down.
Umno since 1981 has left big trails of economic, political and racial ills that Anwar picked up and gathered after his release in September 2004.
The politics of exposure led to Pakatan’s success in the 2008 general election.
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