Amanah leaders should abandon Johor unity govt push by now. It is getting embarrassing
Amanah has been stirring the pot in recent months, causing needless headaches for Pakatan Harapan.
Earlier in August, the party’s Kluang division demanded that the Johor chapter of Barisan Nasional give it the chance to contest the Mahkota state constituency seat, less than a week after its former assemblyman Sharifah Azizah Syed Zaid died.
For the record, the PH component party contested and won the seat in the 2018 state elections, but lost it in the following elections to Sharifah.
The backlash from Umno leaders was swift, and the Amanah division eventually abandoned its quest following intervention from the party’s top leaders.
Then, during the Mahkota by-election campaigning period, Johor Amanah chief Aminolhuda Hassan lobbied for a unity government to be formed in the state should BN wins the by-election with the help from Pakatan Harapan, which backed the candidate from Umno - Syed Hussien Syed Abdullah.
The Johor chapters of DAP and PKR remained mum on the issue throughout the campaigning period. I guess both parties did not want to rock the boat. After all, both parties are currently enjoying a good working relationship with UMNO at the federal level after decades of enmity between them.
Syed Hussien eventually won the by-election in a landslide, and Amanah again lobbied for a unity government in Johor, this time through its Youth chief Hasbie Muda.
Once again, Umno and its BN allies brushed off the call, stating that it was an unnecessary manoeuvre as the state government was forced by BN in 2022 - when it won a state election held that year in a landslide majority.
After a long silence on the issue, DAP finally snapped with party secretary-general Anthony Loke calling for a cessation of such lobbying efforts. He also pointed out that his party has never demanded that a unity government be formed in the southern state.
Loke also pointed out that DAP is fine with playing the opposition role in Johor.
At the time this article was written, PKR had yet to speak up on the matter. So does Amanah, who is expected to speak up on the matter now and bring it to rest.
At this point, the party should have gotten the not-so-subtle hint that its lobbying for a unity government is doomed for failure as it is roundly rejected.
Therefore, Amanah - either through its president Mohamad Sabu or Aminolhuda himself - should come out and say that the party is going to cease its lobbying efforts.
Why? Because such efforts are pathetic, insulting to the voters and embarrassing for the party.
We need to acknowledge that the BN state government was chosen by Johoreans, who made it crystal clear with the super majority that they want BN to lead the state after the PH-led state government collapsed in 2020 following the Sheraton Move.
How shameless Amanah has to be to demand a “backdoor entry” into the state government through a unity government when it was rejected by the voters two years ago?
Also, did the party ever think about whether BN voters would be okay with a state unity government, which is a blatant disrespect towards the mandate that they gave previously?
One may ask: What is wrong with turning the Johor government into a unity government? After all, its Melaka counterpart switched to a unity government with a new chief minister helming the state government.
But here is the thing: Melaka BN did not have to form a unity government, as it was elected by voters who backed it in the 2021 state elections.
But it defied the voters’ mandate by forming a unity government.
It does not matter whether we have a unity government in Putrajaya. That does not mean that we have to switch existing state governments into a unity government.
As a Penangite, I am glad that my state government did not jump on the bandwagon and maintained the status quo by retaining the then two Umno assemblymen in the opposition bench until the state house dissolution in July last year.
This is how you respect the voters’ mandate.
Winning Malay support
It needs to be said that Amanah is currently in a weak state as an all-Malay party after it was decimated in last year's state elections (PRN6) by having managed to retain only eight out of 31 seats in the six states.
The party only has 8 MPs in the Dewan Rakyat at present, down from 11 MPs that it had in the previous term. It risks becoming a deadwood within PH.
The party only has a single assemblyman in Johor, down from nine that it had in the previous term.
The party risks being labelled irrelevant in the Malay community, which is overwhelmingly embracing Perikatan Nasional.
Before Amanah is publicly addressed with such a label among its peers in PH, the party needs to work hard on winning over the moderate Malay voters as well as converting conservative Malays who tend to vote for PAS (of which Amanah is an offshoot) into becoming its core voters.
And the party needs to do so without morphing into a clone of PAS, which would turn off non-Malay voters towards it.
The party also needs to stop blaming its association with DAP for its inability to woo Malay voters. DAP will be around in PH for a long time, and Amanah needs to learn how to operate in the Malay political circle while coexisting in PH with DAP.
Amanah needs to focus on serving as a good opposition in Johor with the only seat it has.
The party has a lot on its plate to work on, and yet it is shamelessly engaging in petty lobbying efforts for a seat in the state government.
Again, how embarrassing.
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