LETTER | Johor, don't fall for Syed Saddiq

LETTER | Muda president Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman’s latest round of attention-seeking to win the hearts and minds of many seemed like a page from the same old book.

In another viral incident, Syed Saddiq was forced to apologise for undermining the work of the PKR elected representative in the Ulu Tiram seat in a now-deleted Facebook posting.

The post alleged that the Indian community in Ulu Tiram was unhappy with the elected representative there and he accused the assemblyperson of not looking after the people’s welfare and of being irresponsible. He said the people there were sick of this and wanted change.

In response and in “apology”, Syed Saddiq admitted his mistake in having undermined the work and responsibilities of S Gopalakrishnan, whom he described as his PKR “comrade”. Gopalakrishnan was elected to the Ulu Tiram seat in the 2018 general election.

Syed Saddiq said his visit to Ulu Tiram to learn more about taking care of the rakyat had been part of Muda’s learning process. He said his party was not perfect and neither was he, as MP for Muar.

“In the spirit of togetherness with my friends from PKR, I apologise for my mistake,” he wrote.

“In the Muar parliamentary constituency, I haven’t been perfect either. There are many other tasks and responsibilities that I still need to fulfil.”

Such random u-turns aren’t foreign to Syed Saddiq – after all, his most famous u-turn would have been the Zakir Naik incident.

We all remember Zakir’s disparaging remarks against the Chinese and Indian communities, where Syed Saddiq was quick to jump on the bandwagon as a hero defending the rights of Malaysian minorities.

After Zakir questioned the loyalty of Chinese and Indian citizens of Malaysia – Syed Saddiq publicly stated that the fugitive preacher should be deported back to India. 

Lo and behold, within two weeks, the former blue-eyed boy of then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad invited the preacher for a meal in his home and called for Malaysians to move on as Zakir had “apologised” for his remarks.

It is no surprise that many still remember such hypocrisy. At the time, Syed Saddiq was the leader of his former party Bersatu’ youth wing.

Likely in an attempt to appease grassroots supporters and put on a show, he did what he felt was needed to reinforce his position among Bersatu members, among other dubious actions by the former minister to secure his position.

Many people are right to call him a hypocrite. Following the boot from Bersatu, Syed Saddiq has been working hard to court the minorities of Malaysia that he threw under the bus. This includes being chummy with the biggest party in Parliament, DAP, through various social media stunts as well as campaigning for them in the recent Sabah state election.

Bear in mind that it was as recently as this year that he publicly denounced several key members of the party for “pressuring” Mahathir to step down as prime minister, and hand over the baton to PKR president Anwar Ibrahim as promised.

Of course, it does not make sense for him to cater to the Malay nationalist voter base again as none of the main parties wants him in their fold. Appealing to the middle ground, and the urban and younger voters is his only choice left.

The willingness to u-turn quickly just paints the picture that he is a political chameleon with no real principles. It probably would not have mattered much if he did an excellent job as the youth and sports minister – alas he did not. Aside from lowering the voting age (which was wanted by both sides anyways), his tenure has been unremarkable at best.

Unfortunately, we see the same patterns with his new party Muda. Despite having established themselves for months now, with many Malaysians signing up as members, the fledgling party has no concrete policy plans and core principles to speak of. Worse still, no organisational structure has been announced – leaving many to wonder if it will just turn into an NGO at the end of the day.

It is time for Malaysians to put a stop to this. While his impacts are still limited today, Syed Saddiq, if given free rein to be the political chameleon that he is, may evolve one day into a gifted demagogue that may put many Malaysians worse off than where they started. Let’s deny him the opportunity.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.