Muhyiddin cabinet to deliver what, to whom exactly?

COMMENT | We now know what the first Muhyiddin Yassin government of ministers and their underlings looks like. We now know the first Muhyiddin cabinet, and thus ‘government’ is not to herald the ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ agenda but to continue from where it was left off before the 2018 elections.

But what will the Muhyiddin cabinet do? What can they do? When will they do it? Will it be done right away or after a honeymoon period of public and private gloating of their self-importance, as is usually the case in Malaysia’s hedonistic politics?

The Muhyiddin regime’s problems are glaring. Given the composition of his cabinet, it reinforces the question of its credibility, including most if not all of its ministers and their deputies. It does not preclude Muhyiddin. Despite being tapped by the country’s king, he has no public mandate to rule. And the make-up of his cabinet double-downs the point that the Muhyiddin regime has zero legitimacy.

Regardless of who now sits in his cabinet, Muhyiddin still has zero credibility for the way in which he has become the eighth prime minister. As such he has zero legitimacy from the most important mob in Malaysia – the voters, and citizens in general.

Muhyiddin might revel now, as will his new cabinet appointees. But they’re nobody until three things happen at once:

1. Call parliament to an emergency sitting for a show of hands for Muhyiddin, to check that he enjoys majority confidence from the people’s political representatives.

2. Better still: call snap elections for the public to decide by which regime they want to be governed.

3. For obvious reasons (i) compel a full and unvarnished declaration of the financial assets to the moment of each cabinet minister and their underlings, including their wives (ii) that these are checkable by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and others such as the Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, and (iii) that these disclosures are not given exclusively and in secret to Muhyiddin alone but placed in a public register and updated regularly by an independent body.

The obvious reason is that a ‘government’ of Malaysia, of any political flavour, and its so-called officers, including its vast mono-ethnic bureaucracy, cannot be trusted. It hasn’t been trusted for six decades and there’s no earthly or godly reason to believe one now. It can’t be trusted after Malaysia’s long history of the religion of corruption and cronyism, and specifically after the trickeries that began in February in full public view.

Monkeyshines that – in the midst of an impending economic and medical crisis – has now saddled the people with the backdoor regime led by Muhyiddin who, quite simply, connived, deceived and betrayed the then ruling Pakatan Harapan regime of which he was a high-ranking member.

Largely mono-ethnic cabinet

Here’s another problem which also goes to the heart of the values of trustworthiness and legitimacy. Muhyiddin’s cabinet is 70 large, compared to Harapan’s 51 including deputy ministers. Three points:

One, clearly the fattened cabinet is Muhyiddin rewarding people for their loyalty; i.e. he has bought their support so he and his lowly Bersatu will survive.

Two: Muhyiddin has bought succour from the one party that can undo him utterly – Umno. That’s not to say it can’t or won’t happen. Ignore PAS and Azmin Ali’s band of cads: they simply don’t have the clout that they pretend otherwise.

Three: Muhyiddin’s 70-big cabinet is effectively mono-ethnic. Almost all are Malay-Muslims. The Borneons in the cabinet hold peripheral posts. GPS of Sarawak, which has cabinet representation, alone can severely rock the Muhyiddin boat but it is Umno against whom he has got to watch his back.

Incidentally, there’s one Chinese who holds transport, as usual, and one Indian who as usual holds the labour portfolio, that goes by the fancy name of human resources. The last two amount to the old fare – political tokenism. But let MCA’s Wee Ka Siong keep deluding himself of his self-majesty.

Fact is that the Muhyiddin regime is similar to the pre-2018 Umno-BN regime led by Najib Razak. Najib, who faces dozens of indictments for corruption, larceny and abuse of power, along with his wife and other immoral Umno-ists, had paid lip service, with Muhyiddin’s tacit support, to the 46 percent of the people of Malaysia who are not Malays and not Muslims and who his regime routinely treated with malicious racial disparagement as second-class citizens.

It also magnifies that Muhyiddin can’t have been serious when he said in the last 10 days that he would govern for “all Malaysians”. He cannot now be trusted on his word that his almost exclusively Malay-Muslim cabinet and bureaucracy will “deliver … for all Malaysians”. It’s the old canard. The oath of office he took on March 1 is worthless, amounting to total farce and a grand lie.

In picking his mono-ethnic cabinet, he’s ensuring he gets the Malay-Muslim majority popular vote. But his first order of business won’t be to guarantee he leads multiracial Malaysia towards its newest banal vision of ‘shared prosperity’ by 2030. It’ll be to harden the protection and advancement of sectorial Malay-Muslim interests and those of his business cronies.

Cash to remain king

Muhyiddin will do what every other regime since 1969 has done: to further embed patron-client relations. He likes to boast he’s a traditional Malay. But the contradiction here is that he will allow cash to remain king.

And with that, he’ll consolidate Malay patronage power structures and institutions. This does not mean direct benefits to all Malays because Muhyiddin, like Mahathir Mohamad and his one-time protégé Najib, will peddle Malay class politics.

None of this should surprise anybody in Malaysia or abroad. The country has been unashamedly rooted in racist politics and policies since independence in 1957, if not since 1946. That was when Umno was founded, not on democratic values but racist predilection that, together with venality, has been religiously pursued to stand as its core principles.

It shouldn’t also surprise either when viewed in the context of Muhyiddin’s 2010 remark: “I am a Malay first…,” he said. “But being Malay does not mean that you are not Malaysian.”

Hold on: Which comes first? Because being Malay and being Malaysian are two different kettle of fish. Have been since at least 1969. Moreover, can anyone distinguish Muhyiddin from his apparent Bersatu-ism from his old Umno-ism?

It’s misleading to suggest Malaysia has taken a turn to right-wing politics after Harapan’s implosion three weeks ago. The country’s politics has been right wing for 63 years apart, arguably, for the 22 months of the Harapan regime. But even then, the politics were superficially moderate.

Underlying Mahathir’s and Anwar Ibrahim’s contesting ideologies was the Malay heartland. Underlying Muhyiddin’s is wholly the same. Unity is just an Orwellian politically convenient slogan. Nothing of substance, real or intellectual, can be expected to change under Muhyiddin. You can bet your life on it.

And what’s to say the Muhyiddin regime will last 22 months?

MANJIT BHATIA reads economics and international politics in New Hampshire in the US.