From Terence Netto
Perikatan Nasional chairperson Muyhiddin Yassin’s announcement that he is now a Malay leader who cares for all Malaysians is a welcome change from 15 years ago when he was keen to show that he was a Malay leader first and then only a Malaysian one.
The older description of himself, done when he was deputy prime minister to the newly installed government of Najib Razak, placed him firmly in the category of “Malay right winger”.
This came when Najib, who had just taken prime ministerial reins from a hapless Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was moving to de-emphasise the salience of race in Malaysian politics.
On the heels of that de-emphasis came notice of Najib’s intention to water down aspects of the NEP, accompanied by the notion that the time had come for an anti-hate speech law to be promulgated.
Into this evolving scenario then deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s assertion that he was “Malay first” and only after that a “Malaysian” set himself squarely against Najib’s NEP-liberalising moves and his effort to lower the lid on racist speech.
In conjunction with former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and with the aid of Perkasa firebrand Ibrahim Ali, the ground was prepared for resistance by the ultras and demagogues against Najib’s measures.
That’s when Muhyiddin‘s “I am Malay first” became coded language for opposition to any move to shift the national discourse to a plane where it could be contemplated that Malaysians envision a future free from the cramp of race and religion.
In fact, the liberalising moves initiated by Najib in the first 18 months of his takeover of the reins from Abdullah Badawi in April 2009 are, in the perspective of the decade and a half since, looked on now as an emollient time.
Some pundits say that in retrospect it was a period that was rife with promise of the country’s deliverance from the twin obsessions of race and religion.
The assertion, “I am Malay first”, by Muhyiddin, took on an ominous hue and has come to summarise the ideological stance of the Malay right wing against moves to forge an egalitarian polity.
So Muhyiddin’s admittedly mild disavowal of that granite stumbling block to a more equable polity must be hailed as a step in favour of progress.
No doubt, sceptics will see the disavowal as an attempt by Muhyiddin to garner votes from the non-Malays for the PN coalition he leads which is shaping up for the next general election that many expect to be held earlier than its due date in late 2027.
Further, doubters will point to the situation in which Muhyiddin made the disavowal, that is, at a political event organised by the Indian component of his coalition, Malaysian Indian People’s Party.
Muhyiddin knows that Indians voters, hitherto strong supporters of the Pakatan Harapan coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, have become deeply disgruntled with the Madani government and are open to overtures from credible alternatives.
It appears he is bidding to entice this disenchanted vote bank to support PN.
This is what is good about a democracy: it shuns finality and considers very little as writ in stone.
Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
