By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Feb 26: Is Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim now a third option to resolve the current political impasse?
According to Santubong MP Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, yesterday the options available were either having interim Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad as the next prime minister or to call for a snap election to end the whole political debacle.
While yesterday, there seemed to be two options, today, there is the rise of the third option.
Since this afternoon, a series of news reports have suggested that Anwar may be named as Pakatan Harapan’s choice for prime minister.
It has been reported that 92 PH MPs declared their support for Anwar during the audience with the King, and more had made U-turns directing their support from Dr Mahathir to Anwar.
The situation was made more unpredictable when Anwar was quoted as saying that the statutory declarations previously signed to support Dr Mahathir to be prime minister were no longer valid.
Should that be true, it means there are three pacts now among the MPs – the PH pact who support Anwar to be the prime minister; the Umno-Pas pact who want a snap election, and a third pact (that includes Datuk Seri Azmin Ali’s group) which supports Dr Mahathir to be the premier.
This latest development, if true, is not good news.
The PH pact may have between 90 to 100 seats; still short of 112 seats to make the simple majority. Other pacts are even worse off. Dr Mahathir’s pact is made up by about 70 MPs (Bersatu, Azmin’s group, GPS and Warisan) and Umno-Pas pact which has about 60 MPs. None of the pacts can reach the quorum of 112.
Of course, Dr Mahathir’s pact can combine with Umno-Pas to form the government. However, Dr Mahathir, in his press conference this afternoon, insisted that he could not allow Umno to be part of his government.
Another possibility is that both GPS and Warisan which made up of 27 MPs leave Dr Mahathir to join Anwar’s pact. For that to happen, perhaps, a lot of negotiations will have to be finalised before the two East Malaysian parties will concede.
However it is, all negotiations will take time to come to a consensus.
Perhaps at the end of the day, the most effective and best solution is going back to the fundamentals – to call for a snap election and let the people decide.
After all, the country belongs to the people, not the 222 MPs, some of whom are responsible for this mess and madness we are now in. —DayakDaily
