THE political contrast is immense between the meekness displayed by Pakatan Harapan (PH) during the second reading of Budget 2021 last week and the decisive confidence vote on Perak Menteri Besar Ahmad Faizal Azumu a few days ago.

Out of the 59 assemblymen, Faizal could only secure a paltry 10 votes, which falls a long way short of a majority needed to sustain his administration.

Since the Hansard of the confidence vote has not yet been made available, we can only speculate where Faizal lost his support.

According to Bersatu secretary-general Hamzah Zainuddin, the 10 votes that the menteri besar managed to garner consisted of four Bersatu, three PAS, one Umno and two independents.

Therefore, it is safe to say Umno, which has a total of 25 seats, collectively voted against the sitting menteri besar, which includes the six exco members in the state government.

If that was true, Faizal did not just suffer a confidence defeat, but also a political humiliation, where more than half of his exco broke the principles of collective responsibility and rebelled against him.

With the third wave of Covid-19, Faizal has effectively lost the prerogative of dissolving the state assembly, which might have potentially stemmed the political rebellion.

Upon suffering a defeat in a confidence vote under normal times, the menteri besar is usually left with the two options of standing down or dissolving the state assembly, much like former Sabah chief minister Mohd Shafie Apdal did in June.

Sensing a potential defeat in the house, Faizal could have chosen the latter, threaten the Umno rebels by dissolving the assembly and let the people of Perak decide their political fate instead.

Umno would certainly have not voted against the menteri besar in such emphatic fashion if the threat of a state election was looming over its head.

While a snap election in Perak now would most likely return a Perikatan Nasional (PN) government with an even stronger mandate, this does not guarantee Umno would have an absolute numerical advantage over PAS and Bersatu.

As things stand, the combined seats of both Bersatu (5) and PAS (3) do not even come close to Umno (25).

Given the impressive performance by Bersatu in the Sabah snap election, there is no guarantee that Umno would be able to retain those 25 seats or have its seats gobbled up by Bersatu.

It is most likely that Bersatu would gain more seats at the expense of Umno. Since there is no fear of an election, Umno exploited the circumstances and duly got rid of the menteri besar, who had been a thorn in its side.

Equally, PH’s hands are tied and the coalition is left with little choice but to play into Umno’s hands.

Having suffered a voter backlash from its no-show act during the Budget 2021’s second reading, PH would risk becoming a political pariah or laughing stock if it either abstains or supports Faizal for no reason.

The fact that Faizal, who is a deputy president of Bersatu, has suffered a defeat of such nature would have Bersatu and its president, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yasin, still holding all the cards in Putrajaya.

Having said that, I would hazard a guess that the sudden upheaval in the “silver state” – which has yet to be resolved at the time of writing – would not have benefitted PH as some have said.

Events after the ousting of Faizal seemed to suggest that the confidence motion was aimed solely at one person (menteri besar), and not the entire state government.

Umno secretary-general Ahmad Maslan’s assertion that the confidence vote was only against the sitting menteri besar, while all excos must be retained, suggest that Umno is still in favour of working with PAS and Bersatu.

To what extent how the embarrassed Bersatu would react to Umno is still undetermined but Umno, by virtue of being the largest party in the Perak assembly, would most likely have its representative installed as the new menteri besar – or a minority menteri besar if there is no support from PAS and Bersatu.

While PAS and Bersatu could cry betrayal, there is nothing to be gained from rejecting Umno since both parties still could not see themselves aligning with PH, which would mean threatening Umno by potentially abandoning it.

The likeliest scenario, therefore, would be an appointment of an Umno Menteri Besar with the begrudging support of Bersatu.

This situation almost resembles the support Muhyiddin has from Umno at federal level.

While the relationship between PN, Muafakat Nasional and Barisan Nasional appears to be in tatters and getting more bitter day by day, there would not be an endgame as long as the option to have fresh elections remains unavailable. – December 6, 2020.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.