🇲🇾 Here we go again?

Hello friends!

Holy smokes, have I been too fixated on Bangkok and missed some warning signs? Malaysian politics has been bubbling along all year since Muhyiddin Yassin seized power after a mess earlier in the year. But was anyone expecting a push notification from the Straits Times at lunchtime? Even Lim Kit Siang seems surprised.

Here’s what we know now - as of early morning Thursday, Australia time. Expect either a breathless update in a couple of days or a total fizzer.

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See you then,Erin Cook

Are we about to see another new government in Malaysia? Anwar Ibrahim sure thinks so. The president of the People's Justice Party and so on (at this point we probably don’t need to rehash his bio!) called a press conference yesterday to announce his intention to seize power and form a government.  

“Conclusively, we have a strong, formidable majority. We are not talking four or five (majority) we are talking much more than that,” he told media. When asked if he was talking a two-thirds, he ‘briefly’ said yes as per the Star.

Get off it, says the Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin camp. The PM shortly after the press conference held his own to address further measures to safeguard the community and the economy against the pandemic. "This allegation now needs to be proven through process and methods determined by the Federal Constitution. Without these processes, Anwar’s statement is a mere allegation. Until proven otherwise, the Perikatan Nasional government still stands firm and I am the legal Prime Minister,” he said in a statement. Ho-hum.

So, now what? As Friend of the Letter Aaron Connelly pointed out amidst the memes and my own minor aneurysm — Anwar has form in bluffing Putrajaya hold ‘em. UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi says he’s been told “many” UMNO and Barisan Nasional MPs are switching allegiances to Anwar, which does sound compelling. For his part, Mahathir Mohamad will ‘wait and see.’

DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang said: "I have been in Sabah since Sept 14 and have not been in contact with Anwar, and Anwar's media conference today is as much a surprise to me as to anyone else."

This one from Channel News Asia looks at the possible implications of the announcement on Saturday’s polls in Sabah as well as the options for the King. Click through, I think, there’s a lot of interesting thinking here.

So, what should we expect? Maybe Anwar meets with the King, as he was meant to earlier in the week but was unable to do so, woos Muhyiddin over to his side and there’s a smooth transition of power, as James Chin suggests would be the challenger’s ideal option. 

Or, as my timeline was clamouring for, a fresh election. 

Holding a general election under COVID-19 conditions is less than ideal (particularly for Sabah who has already copped enough politicking recently), but take it from us Australians who became infamous earlier in the decade for this back and forth mess. Sometimes the muck just needs to be cleared.