Kuala Lumpur: The world has seen their leaders doing worse to ensure their political existence – and state emergencies, or concealing the rights of the general public, has been their top weapon. Be it Germany’s Hitler, or India’s Indira Gandhi, or most recently, the king of Thailand – many iconic world leaders have used the weapon of national emergency in their troubled time, using threats to national sovereignty as their excuse.
Is this what’s happening in Malaysia?
Well, all factors answer this question in the positive. Muhyiddin is troubled and his falling is almost certain – he is surviving on the support from parties of divergent ideologies, and has been facing threats by his own allies like DAP and UMNO.
In short – his government can’t survive for long.
But is he that greedy of power?
Well, this is an obvious question that will make people scratch their heads. There can’t be a certain “yes or no” to this. A laymen’s view would be – every politician, small or big, is hungry for politics.
Yet, there’s a distinction between how Muhyiddin grabbed power and how others did. Almost all past Prime Ministers, including the last two – Mahathir Mohammad and Najib Razak – despite their political rivalry – were mass leaders and they came to power by contesting elections, i.e, on people’s voice.
Muhyiddin, on contrary, is a result of political arithmetic and cunningness a politician exercises. He has a past of ditching (we don’t say it’s wrong in politics) his closest men and shaking hands with arch ideological rivals.
In a nutshell, anything for power.
The man is more of a politician and less of a leader. And if given a chance, he is unlikely to refrain from doing anything like imposing an emergency.
However, Muhyiddin should keep one thing in mind – no leader has ever survived after emergencies.