From Terence Netto
Verbal signals have emerged from three Bersatu leaders, almost simultaneously, that middle-of-the-road stances by coalition-seeking parties is the way towards forming a new federal
governing coalition.
Bersatu Supreme Council members Hamzah Zainudin, Saifuddin Abdullah and Wan Fayshal Wan Ahmad Kamal have shown a penchant in recent days for holding forth on the
wisdom and necessity for centrist-leaning parties to converge to form a new federal coalition to rule the country.
The thrust of their argument is that no single major party can expect to win enough seats to call the shots when they attempt to form a new federal governing coalition.
The major-domo must be a party whose policy stances hew to the centre of the political spectrum in Malaysian politics.
The centre is the ideological basis, according to the Bersatu trio, for the formation of a new federal coalition.
“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” goes a famous line of a WB Yeats’ poem which in the hands of the Bersatu trio of Hamzah, Saifuddin and Wan Fayshal would be rejigged
to form a new coalition.
Re-tooled, it could read, “The centre cannot fail to hold; dissenters scatter to the margins.”
By that light, that reshaping could become the ideological glue for a new federal government ruling coalition.
Implicitly, a centrist orientation would have to dispense with parties espousing the radical left and extreme right ideologies.
Hamzah, Saifuddin and Fayshal did not deal with the implication of the centre-seeking thrust of what they were proposing.
In pushing for a middle-of-the-road preference on policy stances, Bersatu will have to leave out their present coalition partner, PAS.
PAS is generally regarded as an extreme right party, though it might contest the designation.
How would it, then, regard what’s being proposed by the Bersatu trio?
With disdain, of course.
The reason for Bersatu’s push for a new convergence of parties on what is viewed as the sensible centre of Malaysian politics is the perception that the majority of Malaysian voters would support this centrist posturing.
Besides leaving out PAS, a centrist assemblage would also leave out DAP not because it is anti-Malay and anti-Islam, but because this would balance up the exclusion of PAS.
Of course, this will be unfair to DAP: there is more reason to regard PAS as an extremist party than there is to regard DAP as anti-Malay and anti-Islam.
In placing their trust on the existence of a sensible centre in Malaysian politics, and in believing that it is a viable sector, Bersatu’s trio of centre-seeking leaders is looking forward to a new permutation of federal governors.
That this permutation would have to leave out PAS and, less justifiably, DAP, these centrist proponents would be saying that politics is the art of the possible, and the arena of
proximate justice.
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.
