Rafizi explains why Dr M winning GE14 will chart victory for rakyat

Dr Mahathir Mohamad spearheading Pakatan Harapan's 14th general election charge is not a case of the Machiavellian idea of the end justifying the means, according to PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli.

Claiming that many have missed the point, the Pandan lawmaker explained that winning Putrajaya is not the end which the opposition coalition seeks.

Harapan, he added, is seeking an end to a system which has been in place for six-decades under Umno and BN's uninterrupted stranglehold on federal power.

“For that to happen, we must embrace changes as a process, not as a means to an end.

“Who is leading the charge to Putrajaya is less important than educating the Malays of the excesses of Umno so that we can break the racial stranglehold and emancipate the Malays once and for all.

“Whose record is less corrupt is less important than getting overwhelming public support for the restoration of public institutions' integrity and independence so that no one can ever rob the public coffers and get away with it.

“If we manage to do this, there is only one winner – not BN, not Harapan. The rakyat are the winner. They can install and throw out anyone without having to worry how an individual can have so much power over a group of people,” he told Malaysiakini.

Rafizi was responding to an article published in the Nikkei's Asian Review, in which Tokyo-based journalist William Pesek claimed that GE14 was more about Najib and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak brawling over who is less unscrupulous as opposed to finding a way forward for the nation.

The PKR leader pointed out that at the end of Mahathir's rule, no journalist could have predicted that less than a decade later, Umno's hegemony would come under threat.

Rafizi said the unthinkable happens when the process of change emancipates society.

“Once the people realise they hold the power and there are strong safeguards in the system against the excesses of the executive, leaders come and go.

“If by allowing Mahathir to lead the charge hastens the momentum of the process for change, I say so be it. Because what we did in the past to keep the momentum was more unthinkable,” he added.

'Some Chinese friends took years to accept Anwar'

On the same note, Rafizi said he does not blame those who with a cynical view and commentators being puzzled with Harapan's decision to provide Mahathir with such a crucial role.

“If I were to provide a diagnosis to explain the cynicism, the mismatch of expectation lies with (cynics') failure to understand that Malaysian society has embraced competitive politics more readily than the cynics and commentators had thought possible,” he added.

Rafizi recalled how he failed to understand the reason his older friends disagreed with the Reformasi movement, which he embraced, in 1998.

“They said it was all about Anwar (Ibrahim) and it would not have made any difference even if Anwar won then.

“Some Chinese friends took years before they could accept that Anwar was a changed man than the powerful deputy prime minister he was while he was still in Umno,” he said.

In retrospect, Rafizi said if he were a 40-year-old middle management employee in 1998, he might not have supported the Reformasi movement or joined PKR.

“I would not have believed that a multiracial party with sizeable Malay members would survive Malaysian politics because up till 1998, none ever did.

“But as a 40-year-old, we dreamed less and we calculated more. We were less idealistic and we tend to choose safety. Therefore, we spent more time thinking about what could go wrong instead of what opportunities lie ahead.

“But the young do not remember the past that much. They are not shackled by the misgivings of the past.

“So foolishly, a lot of us who jumped on the Reformasi bandwagon in 1998 in our late teens stayed foolish and went on to seek 'change' (whatever that meant then). In the process, we pushed the boundaries and rewrote the rules,” he added.- Mkini

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