Whither and hither Anwar?

Anwar Ibrahim and many of the opposition leaders have this false feeling of grandeur about themselves. But they are not grand, and certainly far from great. They did not make 8 March 2008 happen. The people made it happen. And what the people make the people can break.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Great people do great things. Great people also do the opposite after they have done great things. So, if you have a tendency to do great things, and then do a U-turn later and dismantle all the great things you have done, do not feel too bad for you will be walking amongst the great.

Alexander the Great was one such great person. He set out to conquer the world. And then his ego conquered him. By the time he reached the border of India he had killed off all his close friends and most trusted generals. When they set out to conquer the world ten years before that it was as comrades. Then, friend became foe and the benevolent became malevolent. And, by his own hand, Alexander the Great killed the very people who loved him and who he once used to love as well.

Alexander the Great was of course not the only great man to walk the face of this earth. There were many great men through the ages. Some died unknown as not all great men are listed in the history books. There are probably more unknown soldiers and unsung heroes than those who are remembered. But I have used Alexander the Great as my analogy merely because he carries the title 'great' in his name.

Malaysia too has no shortage of great men. And I use the term 'men' not to mean gender but as they would say 'mankind' when it can also mean women. So we can assume I am also talking about women when I say 'great men'. And some of the great men and women of Malaysia through the ages, some known and many unknown, have lived and died and only a few are left remaining.

I would place Anwar Ibrahim as amongst those great men. Now, Anwar Ibrahim is not the only great man, mind you. There are of course many. But today I want to talk about Anwar Ibrahim, not because he is the only great man Malaysia has given birth to, but because he best reminds me of the greatest of great men, Alexander the Great.

One must read the history of Alexander the Great to understand what I am driving at. No, Alexander the Great was not the perfect man. In fact, the reverse can be said about him. He had more faults than virtues. But his greatness has been measured by his ambition and how he set out to fulfil his ambition to conquer the world and become the one ruler of all mankind. In short, he set an impossible target for himself and almost achieved it. And he almost achieved it because just short of the finishing line he went into self-destruct mode.

And that is why I want to talk about Anwar Ibrahim, not because he is the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, but because he appears to have also gone into self-destruct mode after coming so close to the finishing line.

Anwar Ibrahim's ambition is not as unachievable or that colossal a job as Alexander the Great's. Alexander the Great wanted to become Lord of the World. Anwar Ibrahim just wants to become Lord of Malaysia, the next Prime Minister. And the 8 March 2008 general election is almost like Alexander the Great reaching the border of India. And just like how Alexander the Great went into self-destruct mode and went home a beaten man just short of his goal after killing off all his close friends and most trusted generals, Anwar Ibrahim appears to be doing the same.

So, in that sense, I am measuring Anwar Ibrahim against Alexander the Great not by the greatness in his 'climb to the top' but in how he appears to be plummeting back to the bottom after ALMOST achieving what he set out to do, just like Alexander the Great.

Let's call a spade a spade. I do not wish to hold my punches. Anwar Ibrahim has only one thing in mind and that is to become the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Now, before you fly off the handle, I am not saying that this is such a bad thing. I have no problems with Anwar Ibrahim aspiring to become the next Prime Minister. Someone has to become the Prime Minister. So if it is not Anwar Ibrahim it will have to be someone else. So why not Anwar Ibrahim?

Okay, the Anwar Ibrahim critics are going to now scream that he is a chameleon and that he is a scheming politician and that he can't be trusted and that he plays to the gallery and so on and so forth. Agreed! But so what? This is how politicians are. This is what they do. All politicians will be exactly like how you would classify Anwar Ibrahim. This is what politics is all about.

I suppose, if you want to break out of the mould and find someone who does not have all these 'negative' attributes, we would have to back Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat as the next Prime Minister. And I am sure more of you will reject Nik Aziz Nik Mat compared to Anwar Ibrahim because you feel he is not up to par.

So, as I said, if not Anwar Ibrahim then who if you can't accept Tok Guru Nik Aziz or Lim Kit Siang or Abdul Hadi Awang as the next Prime Minister?

Unfortunately, in politics, greatness is not measured by piety or virtue. It is measured by ambition and how you go about meeting the goals of your ambition. And that is why Alexander the Great is called Alexander the Great in spite of his less than moral character. And if Anwar Ibrahim wants to be seen as great it would be in how he aspires to become the Prime Minister and how he goes about to become the Prime Minister from the underdog position that he has been placed in on 2 September 1998.

But Anwar Ibrahim is doing exactly what Alexander the Great did. Alexander the Great went into self-destruct mode on reaching the finishing line without crossing the finishing line. I see Anwar Ibrahim now also going into self-destruct mode on reaching the finishing line without crossing the finishing line.

But there is some slight difference here. In Alexander the Great's case it was his army. He owned the army. And Alexander the Great demolished his own army when he went into self-destruct mode. In Anwar Ibrahim's case, though, this is not his army. This is our army, which we lent him. So he is demolishing our army, not his own army. Therefore, while Alexander the Great could get away with what he did, Anwar Ibrahim has to be told we will not allow him to get away with it.

2,400 years ago it was different. Times were different then and the situation was also different. Today is not 2,400 years ago. Today is today. And today the leader does not own us like how Alexander the Great owned the people around him -- so he could choose to kill them off whenever he felt like it, even his close friends and trusted generals who loved him.

The 8 March 2008 general election was not Anwar brahim's victory. It was not even a Pakatan Rakyat victory. It was a peoples' victory. It was almost like the storming of the Bastille in France 220 years ago. The only thing is, on 8 March 2008, the people did not 'storm the Bastille' with bullets. They did so with ballots. That is the difference and because of that, and although 50% of the people voted for change, we did not quite achieve change because 50% of the votes did not give the people 50% of the seats in Parliament.

If you were to analyse the election results you will discover that all it needed was an additional 300,000 votes for Barisan Nasional to lose its majority in Parliament. Barisan Nasional won 140 seats while the opposition won only 82 seats, both on 50% of the votes each. But if you look at Barisan Nasional's bottom 30 seats you will see that the combined majority is only 300,000 votes.

This means if the opposition had won an additional 300,000 votes then it would have won 112 seats in Parliament against Barisan Nasional's 110. 300,000 more votes would have given the opposition a two-seat majority in Parliament. This was how close it was. And you could also say that the 300,00 votes comes to about the number of postal votes. Therefore, Barisan Nasional won 140 seats against the opposition's 82 because of the postal votes.

Now you know why the Elections Commission will not abolish the postal voting system. Barisan Nasional depends on postal votes to stay in power -- such as how Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's 1,800 loss transformed into a 200 vote win due to the 2,000 postal votes in 1999 and the recent by-election where the postal votes gave Barisan Nasional its 'resounding victory'.

But that is another matter and something we have discussed so many times in the past. The bottom line is: it was the people and not Anwar Ibrahim who led the opposition to victory, if we can even call it that, on 8 March 2008. So we are not talking about an Alexander the Great of 2,400 years ago situation here. We are talking about France of 220 years ago, the time when the people rose up and swept away the powers-that-be, the French Monarchy.

However, just like in France 220 years ago, the people rose up -- a people-driven movement for change of sorts -- but after that the politicians took over and hijacked the revolution. Thereafter the politicians engaged in power play and political intrigue with plots and schemes and counter-plots and counter-schemes in their bid to outdo each other and grab power for themselves. And for a while there was utter chaos and all hell broke loose. The people effected change. Then the politicians took over and turned on the very people who made it all possible.

And this is how I see the Pakatan Rakyat politicians, Anwar Ibrahim included but not confined only to him. The politicians think 8 March 2008 was their success. They think 8 March 2008 is about them and that it was their achievement.

And this is where they are wrong.

The people are on the verge of rising up, yet again. But this time it is not to storm the Bastille. It is to kick out the politicians who hijacked the revolution, like what happened in France 220 years ago. And, just like in France 220 years ago, the same politicians who sent the French Royal Family to the guillotine will in turn be sent to the guillotine by the people who are fed up with the antics of the politicians.

So Anwar Ibrahim and all those Pakatan Rakyat politicians who hijacked the 8 March 2008 'revolution' better beware. The people chopped off the heads of the politicians back in France 220 years ago when the politicians hijacked the revolution that saw the end of the French Monarchy. And the people did this not just because these politicians hijacked the revolution but also because they changed direction and forgot the cause and turned on each other. And the people did not want to go through all the trouble of storming the Bastille just to remove one tyrant for another.

This appears to be happening in Pakatan Rakyat today like it happened in France 220 years ago. And PKR appears to be the weakest link in the three-party opposition coalition. No, the people have no problems with Anwar Ibrahim wanting to become the Prime Minister. As I said, someone has to become the Prime Minister. But it has to be on the peoples' terms. Anwar Ibrahim is not Alexander the Great. Even Alexander the Great went home a defeated man and died soon after, resulting in a short-lived empire when the empire broke up and the successors turned on each other.

Anwar Ibrahim and many of the opposition leaders have this false feeling of grandeur about themselves. But they are not grand, and certainly far from great. They did not make 8 March 2008 happen. The people made it happen. And what the people make the people can break. And the people are of the opinion that the opposition leaders, Anwar Ibrahim included, have lost their direction.

In France, 220 years ago, the people sent the politicians to the guillotine when they lost their way. Unfortunately, we can't do the same thing today. I wish we could though. But the people will certainly use the ballot where they can't use the bullet. And with the current goings-on in the opposition, in particular in PKR, the people will do exactly what they did in France 220 years ago. They are going to axe the heads of the politicians who hijacked the revolution and forgot that it was the people and not the politicians who stormed the Bastille.