Muhyiddin's tiny majority of 2

So, we find that Muhyiddin has 113 MPs out of 222. That means he has a tiny majority of two. If two MPs crossover to the Opposition, his government falls.

He's trying to keep Perikatan together by making a whole bunch of them either ministers or deputy ministers, and the rest: GLC heads. Will that satisfy all 113? All it takes is for two disgruntled MPs who feel they didn't quite get what they deserved and it's game over.

This is not a stable coalition. It's really a marriage of convenience. Sure, Harapan was a marriage of convenience too but that one involved three parties that genuinely got along well (PKR, DAP & Amanah) teaming up with one that didn't quite fit in (Bersatu). With Perikatan, it involves three main parties that are actually rivals to each other.

Even if Perikatan manages to make it to GE15 without imploding it would be close to impossible for them to come up with seat allocations with Bersatu, UMNO and PAS all vying for the same demographic. It would have been hard enough for UMNO and PAS to sort out seat allocations. Now, you have Bersatu in the mix. Impossible!

UMNO will want to contest in most of these seats because it wants to maintain its position as the party with the most seats in the coalition. PAS wants to contest more seats because it doesn't want to play second fiddle to UMNO. Bersatu wants to contest more seats because it wants to be the biggest party in the coalition too. What a powder keg!

If Harapan can get its act together, it should not have to worry too much about Perikatan.

Give Anwar some credit

Some people have been super critical of Anwar and Harapan for willing to work with Dr M to oppose Muhyiddin.

I've been super critical of how Harapan had adopted a policy of appeasement towards Dr M during their time in power. They basically kowtowed to him based on a mixture of fear and hope. They feared that he might torpedo the whole endeavor. They hoped that by letting him have his way, he would keep to his promise of handing over power to Anwar. This was a flawed policy from the start. Far from encouraging good behavior, it emboldened Dr M to run roughshod over Harapan's Manifesto. If anything, it encouraged bad behavior.

So, yes, for that I am super critical. But that's the past. Let's talk about now. Should they team up with Dr M again? That requires a nuanced answer. It's not a straight yes or no.

Right after the Sheraton Move, I said that Harapan needs to chart its own course without relying on the Dr M faction of Bersatu and without Warisan. Don't forget, Warisan's allegiance is with Dr M, it is not with Harapan.

What this means is, going into GE15, Harapan must aim to win enough seats to form the government without external help. To do this means the three parties of PKR, DAP and Amanah have to contest a lot more seats than they did in GE14. They have to contest in all areas where they think they can win, even if it's a seat that Bersatu or Warisan has staked a claim on.

If they win the elections (on their own) and Bersatu and Warisan want to continue to support Harapan, by all means but it will be on Harapan's terms.

Between now and GE15 though, the Opposition (led by Harapan) cannot let the Perikatan government go unchecked. So, Anwar, as the Opposition leader, has to work with other Opposition leaders such as Dr M and Shafie Apdal. It makes sense for the Opposition parties to be united.

Anwar and gang at Harapan are not stupid. They may have made a big strategic mistake the first time around but this time they will not let Bersatu dictate things. Back then, Dr M had the nuclear option of blowing everything up if he didn't get his way. What does he have now? There is no nuclear option anymore thanks to his former right-hand man Muhyiddin and his former blue-eyed boy, Azmin, who already used the nuclear option to jointly blow up the Harapan government. Dr M has no leverage anymore. The harsh reality is that he needs Harapan much, much more than Harapan needs him.

In any battle, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. It doesn't hurt Harapan to have Dr M wage battle against Muhyiddin and gang, provided Harapan never falls into the trap of relying on Dr M. Harapan must work on the basis that they have 92 MPs not 109 (the number they are believed to have if you include Dr M's Bersatu and Warisan). They can work with Dr M and gang to keep Perikatan in check but come GE15, they need to win at least 20 additional seats on their own so they can form a government without relying on parties outside of Harapan. This is not a tall order. It is very doable and something they should work on.

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...