By Di Shen Pan
Some people anticipate the arrival of an angel while resisting the existence of God. That is truly contradicting!
A successful politician should be a hybrid of lion and fox. He should be cunning like a fox and attack fiercely like a lion. Under circumstances, he should be able to interchange between the two identities – advance with attack and retreat with defense.
PKR supremo Anwar has such unique traits. Originally from UMNO, he understands UMNO’s mind-set. In order to defeat UMNO, one needs to probe its way of thinking. “If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous battles without jeopardy,” said Sun Tzu. Undeniably, as the head of Pakatan Rakyat, Anwar is still the key person who should be leading the change.
Approaching 70 years, UMNO stands like an old tree with deep roots that may collapse under two circumstances:
- Self-destruction. Corruption continues to spread and paralyze the organization, breaks down with insufficient resources in the end.
- Fall to own men who colluded with external political force. Those people are originated from UMNO but were rejected, and they are familiar with UMNO, for example Anwar or Pakatan Rakyat.
Anwar is not perfect, nor the PR formation. However, the history of democracy reformation should not stop because of this. The people should not stand still to await the angel’s arrival.
The political reality is always cruel. A choice has to be made between two powers. Even if one of them were angel, it may become a devil after a certain years. The political reality keeps repeating itself. The political system reformation evolves from tribal, feudal, military to modern democratic governing. We should not judge political reformist in the name of ethics but we should in turn measure their achievement in the historical timeline.
Some academic critic opined that Anwar and PKR should be punished in the Kajang by-election. Can we do this? Of course we can. But if this were to happen, the process of democratic reformation of the country would be delayed for at least one or two decades, or even longer.
Anwar is familiar with UMNO and adept in connecting PAS and DAP. He has provided a historical moment to unite the two parties from distinct ideologies, forming a strong alliance to attack UMNO. If we missed this opportunity of having people like Anwar to make history, we do not know how long we will have to wait for another similar chance.
After the opposition’s defeat in the last general election, many politicians are still suffering from post-election exhaustion; the political ambience has been rather dull. The ruling party which only obtained 47% of the total votes formed a weak government, and the leadership has lost its direction; providing a chance for right wing extremist in the party to create havoc by burning police station and church, throwing pork into mosque, spilling chicken blood, seizing bibles, prohibiting the use of “Allah”. In addition to that, the childish Kangkung issue has also ignited people’s rage in price hikes. All these issues have contributed to the golden opportunity for PR to attack.
The core idea of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is based on “moral law”. The moral law is given a significant mention in chapter one. Whoever understands the fundamental of moral law will be in control of the situation.
Anwar has identified the opportunity. Although he did not have a legitimate reason he went ahead to create the by-election. This is because he understands the voters’ choice and stands at a better position to dominate the current state.
Sun Tzu said: a skilled fighter puts himself in a position which makes defeat impossible and grabs every opportunity to defeat the enemy. Thus in war the warriors win first then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
In this case, BN will still lose the war in Kajang regardless of which candidate it sent.
(Oriental Daily News, 25-02-2014)
Original Source: 先胜而后求战的安华