LETTER | One year as PM: Doing a ‘Jack Sparrow’ not helping Anwar

LETTER | Anwar Ibrahim has signed off his one-year anniversary as the prime minister by declaring that the unity government and he have tried their best.

He then added that his reign is politically stable and hopes there will be no disturbances in the next four years and resolved to improve in the coming years.

I don’t know about the next four years. I am more interested in seeing whether his government will make it past the next three months.

I hate to sound superstitious, but since Najib Abdul Razak was toppled in 2018, I have noticed that all the governments in Malaysia have been “cursed” with shorter and shorter lifespans.

Dr Mahathir Mohamad only lasted 22 months. Muhyiddin Yassin only made it to 17 months. Ismail Sabri Yaakob is the shortest-serving prime minister in the country, with 15 months in his belt.

Considering this, the record I am interested to see Anwar beat belongs to Ismail Sabri. If Anwar can break Ismail Sabri’s record and survive another three months, then I will believe that the “curse” on the government has been broken and Anwar's reign will be able to make it for another four years.

Other than surviving the next three months, I also hope that Anwar will try to bolster the longevity of his government by actually achieving something that is worth achieving.

Saying that you have tried your best is not just a matter of empty words. It is about setting objectives, coming out with a feasible plan and committing yourself to the necessary exercises and practises to achieve your goals.

If you want to start your own business in five years and need RM500,000 to do it, but starting off with zero sen in your bank account today, you should come up with a plan to save an average of RM10,000 every month for the next 60 months.

This is a good plan because even if you fail to save anything for 10 months, you will still meet your target. After you have the plan, rain or shine, you are going to have to commit to following it.

If in between, something untoward happens, like if became the victim of a scam and lost RM200,000, and thus, you could just manage to save RM400,000, so you had to scale down on your goal and start a smaller business instead, then you have the right to say that you tried your best even if you didn’t reach your full objectives.

However, if you have no goal, plan, commitments and exercises, but you say that you tried your best, you are just an empty can.

You might wish for a lot of things and express your wishes loudly, but they are just the empty words of an incompetent person. It means nothing because you are incapable of changing anything.

If you ask anybody on the street what Anwar has achieved in the last 12 months, the best answer you will receive is: “give him more time. He just had one year”.

The worst answer that you will receive is that the only thing Anwar has achieved is saving Ahmad Zahid Hamidi from jail and getting Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman whipped for leaving the unity government.

Some of you might be thinking: “Wait a minute. Syed Saddiq is not going to be whipped because he left the unity government, he is going to be whipped because he allegedly embezzled money and Zahid was not freed from his charges by Anwar, but by the courts and the Attorney General’s Chamber,” and officially, you would be right.

But the official narrative and popular opinion are not always the same thing, and the government should be concerned about that, because to the degree that the popular opinion diverges from the official narrative, the government is not safe, regardless of how many opposition MPs it has managed to sway to its side.

Independent pollster Merdeka Center came out a couple of days ago to say that Anwar’s personal approval rating is just standing at 50 percent.

Just February, his approval rating was at 68 percent. If even with a 68 percent approval rating, Anwar lost decisively to Perikatan Nasional in three states and saw it making inroads in another three states in the Aug 12 state elections, imagine what kind of problem he can expect in 2024, now that his approval rating has slid by 18 percent.

To Anwar, all I got to say is, to have a goal. Aim for something.

What are you focusing on? Is it the economy? Is it reforms? Is it national unity? What?

Doing a Jack Sparrow and “making things up as you go along” or doing a “Jack-of-all-trades, master of none” act is all fine and well if you indulge in it every now and then.

However, if you keep doing it all year long, you are not being serious about wanting to reign for another four years.

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