PN: an unstable coalition

It's very clear that Perikatan Nasional is an unstable coalition. Actually, it's not even a formal coalition, as UMNO leaders have taken pains to point out. We don't know exactly how many MPs Muhyiddin has with him but a good working theory is 113, which is political analyst Wong Chin Huat's assumption. To control Parliament, you need 112. So, Muhyiddin really has razor thin majority. All it takes is for two people to jump ship and your makeshift coalition crumbles.

Pakatan Harapan, which involved a marriage of convenience between PKR/DAP/Amanah with Bersatu, took nearly two years to fall apart. It's a safe bet it won't take anywhere that long for Perikatan to do the same. And the reason is simple: UMNO is not used to playing second fiddle and it will not stand for it in the medium term. In the short term, it was willing to be second banana because it was desperate to wrest power from Harapan. But already, you are seeing lots of cracks happening.

Muhyiddin has given positions to a lot of MPs in Perikatan but still there are some who have gotten nothing. And this is a problem, as Wong Chin Huat points out:

When three out of five PN parliamentarians are either a minister, deputy minister, deputy speaker or menteri besar, how do you convince the remaining 45 that they are not losers?

Perhaps Muhyiddin can appoint them to become heads of GLCs or something like that. But all it takes is for two of them to be disappointed and there goes your coalition!

But let's assume for the sake of discussion that he is able to mollify all. There would still be a problem when it comes to GE15. It's hard to imagine any consensus on seat allocation happening. This is a point well articulated by DAP MP Ong Kian Ming:

UMNO and PAS will have their hands full in allocating the 100 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia, where both parties contested in GE14, under a Muafakat Nasional (MN) formula for GE15. Umno, PAS and Bersatu competed in 47 Parliament seats in Peninsular Malaysia in GE14.

Harapan should call Dr M's bluff

It was interesting reading Khalid Samad's account of what happened during the Harapan Presidential Council meeting ultimately led to the Sheraton Move and Dr M resigning from his post as PM.

Khalid is clearly of the opinion that Harapan should carry on their cooperation with Dr M, who in Khalid's calculation, is more of a friend than a foe.

Khalid is wrong. Dr M might not be foe but he's certainly not a friend of Harapan. Let's just look at the facts, shall we?

Fact #1: Dr M never accepted Harapan's multiracial approach. What he wanted most was for Harapan to emulate the BN approach where a Malay party dominated. He outright called for MPs from UMNO and PAS to join Bersatu so that it could become a Malay mega-party.

Fact #2: He was never sincere about passing the baton to Anwar. It was he who elevated Azmin so that he could pit him against Anwar.

Fact #3: Although he did not orchestrate the Sheraton Move, he knew Muhyiddin was plotting this all along and did nothing to nip it in the bud. All he said to Muhyiddin was to put this off until the criminal trials of Najib and gang were over. Oh, and there was APEC too. After APEC, you could do whatever you want, he told Muhyiddin.

Fact #4: After the Sheraton Move had happened, Harapan leaders invited him to come back as their leader and help them gain back control of the government. He refused, in favor of a unity government concept whereby everyone would be beholden to him and he would be accountable to no one.

These four things are indisputable. They are not opinions but facts. In many of the points, Dr M have confirmed them in his own words.

I've said it before, I'll say it a million times: Harapan has got to move forward and aim to win the next GE without Bersatu and without Warisan as well (which has to date only pledged their allegiance to Dr M not to Harapan).

Politics is the art of the impossible and while it's hard to imagine a scenario where Harapan and Dr M could work together again, it could very well happen. But given that Harapan now has the upper hand by a mile, it should impose one key condition if Dr M wants to join forces again to oust Perikatan.

Harapan should insist that if they are to work together to achieve this, it would be Anwar who would be made PM. Dr M could be made senior minister or minister mentor or anything you want to call it. But the PM has to be Anwar.

If Dr M is sincere about wanting to oust Muhyiddin for collaborating with kleptocrats, he should be willing to accept Anwar as PM, if that is the condition to make this happen. If Dr M is not willing to accept this, it means he'd rather accept Muhyiddin working with kleptocrats. 

Since Dr M continues to claim that he is opposed to working with kleptocrats, Harapan should call his bluff and ask him to help get Anwar installed as PM.

Charging the jogging doctor is too much

Doctor argues that it's not a curfew

Recently, I wrote a blog posting that says it's very clear that the authorities don't want us to go out for a jog during these times. I made it clear that I think one should not flout these rules. Even if one can argue the point that the Movement Control Order is not a curfew, it's pretty obvious we should not be jogging during this time.

Now, we learn that the doctor who created a bit of a ruckus when asked to stop jogging, is being charged with two offences. I personally thought he should have just obeyed the officers when they asked him to go back home but to charge him for jogging, especially when the incident happened when the lock-down was still so new, is way over the top.

At the time, it really was not clear what was allowed and what was not. As the doctor had pointed out in his exchange with the officers, the MCO is not a curfew. And at that time nowhere was it explicitly stated that jogging alone was against the law. Subsequent to that, yes, it was made pretty obvious that people should just stay home unless they were going out to buy groceries or medicine etc. But in the early days it really was not clear.

Just give him a warning lah...

Covid-19: Better to over-prepare

We have enough beds even if there's a spike in Covid-19 new infections

The government has prepared 19,200 beds just in case new infections go into overload. Will we need that many beds? Hopefully not. But with Covid-19, it's always better to over-prepare than under-prepare.

Compared to the numbers in Europe (infections, death), we don't have it so bad. The new infection rate hasn't really changed. We're still getting over 100 new infections per day and at least one death per day. So, the disease hasn't started waning yet. But it hasn't spiked up either.

Who knows when the tipping point for it to start waning will happen. The government has extended the lock-down to mid-April only, so the calculation must be that by then, we will see very few or perhaps no new infections. Is this possible? China has show that it can be. Wuhan has achieved no new local infections. This gives us hope.

We read about people who violate the lock-down but most people are complying. This is what is necessary in order to break the chain of infection. Hopefully by mid-April or shortly thereafter the virus will run out of new people to infect due to this lock-down.

Our lock-down is not as severe as in some European countries like Italy and France where you have to fill out forms if you want to go outside. But ours is pretty stringent, as it should be. If you want to have a lock-down, you might as well have a proper lock-down.

If that means we can't go jogging for the time being, so be it. I'm all for a stringent lock-down. Imagine how much more disruptive and dangerous it would be if our situation were to become like Italy's. That thought alone should scare the living daylights out of you and convince you to stay home.

Stayin' In

I'm sure by now you've seen that viral video of a doctor arguing with some enforcement officials about whether he should be allowed to exercise outside. While this was the most publicized account of the differing opinions about whether people are allowed to exercise outside during the lock-down (or Movement Control Order, to be more formal), apparently there is still quite a lot of disagreement among segments of the population about this matter.

I recently received a message from a friend who said in her neighborhood there's quite a lot of debate about this matter, with some arguing that it's not allowed while others believing that it is.

While the initial announcement of the lock-down was not very clear on this -- and the doctor was technically correct in pointing out that the MCO is not a curfew -- it's pretty obvious by now that we shouldn't be going outside unless it's to buy groceries, go to the pharmacy, go to the clinic, etc. The so-called "essential" stuff.

We haven't yet reached a point like in France or Italy where you have to fill out a form whenever you want to go out to do something but if you've been following the news and listening to what the leaders are saying, it's basically, "Don't go outside unless it's absolutely necessary".

In my neighborhood, people are still taking their dogs outside to let them ease themselves and older folks can still be seen going outside for fresh air and perhaps a brisk walk around the neighborhood. So far, nobody's objecting as far as I can tell.

I think some people will starting voicing their displeasure if somebody starts jogging or cycling around the neighborhood though. Not that jogging solo or cycling solo is endangering anybody but it goes against the whole "stay at home" spirit that the government is trying to impose, for our own good.

Somehow, just taking your dog out for a brief moment or stepping outside for a short walk just doesn't seem like a flagrant disregard for the lock-down in the way that jogging or cycling appear to be.

There's no need to argue about the legality of this matter, about whether the MCO is actually a curfew or not (it's not). As I had mentioned earlier, it's clear by now that we should be staying in as much as we can.

I don't think this is unreasonable if we want to contain this virus or at least prevent it from overwhelming our health system the way it has done in Italy. In fact, I wouldn't even object if the government felt it was necessary to impose a strict curfew.

Sam Harris, in his Making Sense podcast, said that the challenging thing about this Covid-19 situation is that the things you need to do to contain the virus would always seem over-kill at the time it needs to be done and by the time it's obvious that these things need to be done, it's already too late.

For example, the time to shut down schools is before any kid gets the virus. But if you did that early on, some people would say that's an over-reaction. Of course by the time one or two kids get the virus, everybody would agree you need to close the school. But by then, those kids would have infected someone.

You're seeing this play out in the US where governors of badly afflicted states are reluctant to order a strict shut-down. As a result, millennials were still going to the beach and living it up. You've probably seen that famous clip of some teen saying, "If I get Corona, I get Corona... that's not going to stop me partying."

Why don't they just issue a lock-down and ban people from going out like they've done in Italy, Spain and France? Because it's hugely unpopular. People will think it's overkill. Of course when scores of people start getting the virus and the death toll starts rising at an alarming rate, no one will object to it but by then it's too late.

So, I feel if we need to clamp down on this thing, let's clamp down on this thing and do it right. Be strict and do what's necessary to cut off new infections. We might as well do it now and things will get better sooner rather than later. If we drag our feet and do half measures, it will only prolong this thing.

If it means we need to get the army involved with soldiers (not carrying guns) helping the police ensure that the lock-down is observed, I'm all for that. After all, people are still defying the lock-down.

And if it means I can't jog outside and instead have to jog on my treadmill (or if I don't have a treadmill, jog in place or do push-ups or whatever), so be it. That's a small inconvenience compared to what we will have to face if Malaysia becomes like Italy.

Let's bear the inconvenience and hardship now. Just stay at home and cut off the chain of infection. No need to argue on technical grounds whether a lock-down constitutes a curfew etc, etc. Now is not the time to argue the letter of the law but rather to live by the spirit of the law.

Just stay at home as much as possible so that the lock-down doesn't have to be prolonged.