A MEETING held at Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s home called by Muhyiddin Yassin on the afternoon of February 23 exposes a disturbing reality about our country’s mainstream politics.

After six decades of social amalgamation and hard work building and uniting a country, celebrating its multiethnicity and multiculturalism, a recent political event blatantly exposed the worst of our fears. One major party has never been honest to the other.

The cleavage dividing the Malays and the non-Malays in the politics of suspect seems as wider as ever. Recall Muhyiddin who boasted that he was a “Malay first” and a Malaysian second.

And he is the prime minister today. One cannot be blamed for being frightened of what the future may hold for some.

His recent declaration that he is a PM to all Malaysians can only be taken with lots of pinches of salt. His integrity out rightly collapses when he chooses again to work with notorious kleptocrats and religious bigots, PAS.

The expose by Sarawak Report about Abdul Hadi Awang’s paying Clare Rewcastle Brown an out-of-court settlement lays bare PAS leaders for lying through their teeth.  

Further, when Muhyiddin traded his PM position with coveted ministerial and GLC positions with PAS, his remaining righteousness and virtues, if he had any, evaporated into thin air.

Back to February 23, immediately after failing to convince Dr Mahathir at the Bersatu headquarters to commit to leaving the Pakatan Harapan coalition, big guns, all Malays, probably mustered by Azmin Ali and played along by Muhyiddin, ambushed Dr Mahathir again at his house to try again to talk him into it.

But Dr Mahathir stood his ground. His refusal to accede subsequently forced the plotters, determined as they were, made the next, now infamous “Sheraton move”.

Now comes the worrisome part.  Was that meeting aimed at resolving a national crisis or was it a racist and Religious agenda? This piece is not about racism. But it sure questions the sincerity and the motivation of those who attended the showdown.

Was the meeting attended by only one section of our society? If it was, why were the minority that represented 49.9% of population not represented? Not relevant?  

Were the non-Malay Barisan Nasional/Gabungan Parti Sarawak/Warisan leaders invited to that meeting? If not, we are left with two ways of looking at it.

One, when it comes to sharing of power and deciding the collective future of our citizens, are the non-Malay leaders considered irrelevant?

Two, if it was about forming a government, why did they keep the agenda exclusively Malay? Did Umno betray their non-Malay racial rarties? Did Bersatu also betray its non-Malay coalition leaders both in PKR and DAP? If so, what are they? Simply poster boys?

There things come to mind. First, if the covert meeting was attended by racist and religious bigots with a sole supremacist agenda, what were Warisan chief Shafie Abdal and GPS chief Abang Johari Openg doing there?

Don’t they represent a multi-ethnic and multireligious electorate? They have equal numbers of non-Malay elected representatives both at the state and federal levels? Were they betrayed as well? How do Sabah and Sarawak find concurrences in political parties that are based on race or religion?

These two chief ministers who chose to attend this racial and religious clandestine showdown, did they also commit for their non-Malay constituents? 

OK, Warisan at finality, chose not to be part of that evil rebellion. We also know how MIC, MCA and Gerakan are treated by Umno and PAS. Irrelevant poster boys. But what about the non-Malay MPs in GPS. Are they supportive of their state leader lending weightage to a narrow racist and religious agenda?

Second, understandably, unlike PAS, Amanah was too honourable and virtuous to be invited for such a treacherous event. 

But we know now, the motivation of this subversion actually had nothing to do with race or religion. They were purely motivated by greed for money and power. One uses race and the other uses religion. Benjamin Franklin said it well “tricks and treachery are the practice of the fools that don’t have brains enough to be honest”.

Third, the covert meeting was probably about backstabbing the chosen successor for Dr Mahathir, Anwar Ibrahim.

Openly playing “Brutus” and working on the whole game plan long before GE14, Azmin is said to have rigorously “herded all the Judas” to commit this infidelity that afternoon.

Azmin easily outwitted Muhyiddin to astutely pitch him against Dr Mahathir in order to achieve with the flow of events, his own lust of being closer to the coveted PM’s chair.

The new expose believed to be the voice of Muhyiddin, if proven authentic, offers another felonious twist to the whole fiasco.

Muhyiddin dangles ministerial and head of GLCs positions to lure Umno MPs to jump ship to Bersatu. Legal hawks say under the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Act 2009, such offering and receiving of gratification amounts to corruption and should be charged in court. – June 1, 2020.

* Sarajun Hoda is a social activist with Aliran. He is a former deputy chair of Bersih 2.0 and former commissioner at the National Water Services Commission (SPAN).

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.