LEADERS come and go; some overextend their welcome, some gone too soon.

Time will tell if the public pressure and cyberspace angst was warranted, or we just succumbed to political spin.

Politics is akin to a real-life game of thrones; you win or die trying. Some of the ousted politicians are literally fighting for their lives or to avoid incarceration.

They will go to great lengths to get what they want; their moves are clear as daylight, doused with a bit of spin (not to forget blind faith in leaders).

Political parties must learn that the old ways of doing things are in the past, everything now is under scrutiny of our eagle eyed Malaysian cybertroopers.

Scheming, plotting, cloak-and-dagger moves are easily uncovered and exposed. Now even more so when they are locked up and angry.

Having said that, Muhyiddin has all our best interests at heart and he is trying to the best of his ability to save Malaysia, although he’s handicapped by the personnel in his team.

Those bumbling amateurish mistakes have cost this administration serious credibility issues (yes factories, Sabah etc) These various appointees were due to promises made when negotiations were brought to the table.

Many of those appointments he had no choice but to appoint as Umno’s leadership wouldn’t take those positions.

When asked for the list of personnel to fill up cabinet posts, the Umno leadership felt it was beneath them to be appointed under Muhyiddin, or they wanted to embrace the self-reflection they were so busy talking about  – but didn’t actually happen – after losing in the last general elections.

Even the successful minister co-ordinating the vaccination programme wasn’t on the recommended list of ministerial candidates by Umno, but Muhyiddin recognised he needed talent to be in the team and took him in, nonetheless.

Being close to a cancer survivor, I could understand the psyche of one. Being diagnosed with cancer is indeed facing your own mortality and having understood that your time is limited.

For a Muslim, embracing death encompasses getting to grips with the trials and tribulations of afterlife.

Being a politician for so long he would want his last few productive years doing good, planting the seeds that will grow and shelter him in the next life as what is there to look forward for?

Embracing death is something that few of us really gave serious thought of as many of us feel that it is far away.

He knows and the “diarrhoea” was a reminder, for which many made fun of him. He has felt the bitter and humbling experience of being sacked as deputy prime minister in 2016.

I bet you not in a million years he thought he would be prime minister four years later. Starting afresh, he made it back and it goes to show he has perseverance and gumption to do what’s right when the time is right.

The only issue with Muhyiddin is that he is too forgiving of his cabinet. It is understandable because of his slim majority and one trigger might cause the whole house of cards to collapse.

He did do many things right and almost everything was going well until the Sabah election, where then the incumbent chief minister said he would rather die in the political ring than to allow the people mandate to be scorned by some individuals.

That has an ominous ring to it as the Covid spark there turned into a forest fire that is still burning today.

Muhyiddin wasn’t able shackle his coalition party leaders to a forced quarantine when they came back.

We never recovered.

After which, his bumbling cabinet then went on flouting the quarantine and showing off in front of the public, which had a field day with little else to do at home.

Honestly it felt like these ministers’ and political leaders were doing such actions intentionally to anger the masses.

In the end the simmering anger turned into a boiling resentment of him. The reticent Ismail Sabri Yaakob has always been a steady leader with good credentials, hardly in the spotlight and with no scandals.

He has a cool demeanour and always been a staunch party person. As the only one from Umno’s top five in the cabinet, he has shown diligence and credibility in performing his duty.

From all the PN’s senior ministers, he has shined whereas the others made huge blunders or just went missing.

Although he has been put in a tight spot by both the prime minister and Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, his actions were commendable, neither impulsive, authoritarian nor reckless, always with discourse and dialogue.

He knows when to speak up and when not to create unnecessary issues by saying the wrong things. He has shown that we need not follow blindly, we can think and make wise decisions.

It is sad now that on social media we as a country have turned our back on him. Now that the #KerajaanGagal movement sparked by his own coalition member, flamed by their counterparts across the aisle, has now reached its peak we need to rethink, would we fare any better by changing governments?

What are the changes that can immediately have any impact on severe illness and deaths? More testing and isolation? Stop wastage and pilferage?

As we saw after last elections, old cronies will just be replaced by new ones. That is the extent of change you can expect. The smart opposition will turn into bumbling government lawmakers and vice versa.

Vaccination is well underway, and cases will come down. This we must hand it to Winston “Khairy” Churchill and his team that has planned, negotiated, and executed their way to achieved extraordinary numbers.

Once a high percentage of us have been vaccinated we can have some sort of normalcy back in our lives.

Let us play our part and continue this struggle for another month, God willing we will overcome this together. – August 15, 2021.

* Adli Ghazi is vice chief of Umno’s Lembah Pantai division.

* 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.