‘Pakatan taking a step backwards’

Opposition’s choice of Dr M for PM shows it has no faith in its own leaders, says expert

PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan’s choice of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as its candidate for prime minister is a step backwards for the Opposition grouping, said Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia Senior Fellow Sholto Byrnes.

In an opinion piece yesterday in The National, a newspaper published in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Byrnes wrote that Pakatan’s choice of Dr Mahathir showed it did not have confidence in its own leaders.

He said it also reflected badly on Opposition supporters who were strongly against the Government, which Dr Mahathir led for 22 years.

“The notion that this represents change, let alone fresh blood, is laughable and reflects very poorly on the Opposition’s confidence not only in its younger cadres, but also in those who have always opposed the Barisan Nasional governing coalition,” said Byrnes.

He said many Opposition supporters and leaders were imprisoned by Dr Mahathir, who is currently Pakatan Harapan chairman, for no good reason other than that their vehement opposition inconvenienced him.

“They are entitled to feel bitter at having to kowtow to their former jailer,” he added.

Byrnes noted that Dr Mahathir, who is now 92, would become the world’s oldest leader if elected in the event that Pakatan Harapan wrests power from Barisan.

This, he said, would open Malaysia to international ridicule.

“Any who doubt that should imagine the incredulous laughter if either George H.W. Bush, aged 93, or Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a sprightly 91, were to seek to return to the presidencies of the United States and France respectively,” he said.

Commenting on Dr Mahathir’s Dec 30 apology for his past mistakes when he was prime minister, Byrnes pointed out that the former leader said sorry for nothing specific.

Dr Mahathir later suggested that it was Malay custom to apologise for possible past mistakes.

“Whatever charges might be laid against him over possible wrongdoing during the course of his premiership – and Opposition activists have in the past called for him to be put on trial for them – he is essentially unrepentant,” Byrnes wrote.

He said Dr Mahathir would never have switched to the Opposition if Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had been prepared to act as Dr Mahathir’s tame supplicant and do everything his former boss wanted.

“For ever since he stood down from the premiership, Dr Mahathir has not been able to let go,” he said.

Recognising that it was Chinese faces who had the track record and visibility in the Opposition after Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s jailing, Byrnes said Pakatan was trying to hide them behind a facade of Malay politicians to win the crucial votes of the majority Malays.

“There are decent people in the Opposition, whom I have come to know personally. But this new top ticket drives a coach and horses through the Opposition’s old principles and thus through whatever moral authority it had,” he said.