The charging of Muhyiddin Yassin challenges the legitimacy of the ‘unity government
Lawfare is a bad strategy
![UPDATED] Anwar and Muhyiddin drop defamation suits in mutual agreement](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F165d0620-ca0a-4736-8b95-06e61a2dbb57_1200x630.jpeg "UPDATED] Anwar and Muhyiddin drop defamation suits in mutual agreement")
The former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin charges under Section 4(1) of the Sedition Act 1948 will become an unnecessary focus upon the legitimacy of Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister. As Muhyiddin has pleaded not guilty and claimed trial over the charges, the whole episode of how Anwar became prime minister will be brought to public attention once again.
Muhyiddin claimed he presented 115 statutory declarations, enough to give him the slimmest of majorities in the Dewan Rakyat. Technically, this should have been enough to win confidence of the former YDPA to commission Muhyiddin as prime minister. However, a string of events occurred where Ahmad Zahid Hamidi took UMNO (or part of Barisan Nasional’s 30 seats away) from the support Muhyiddin had, and upon this and some prodding, Sarawak GPS also switched sides.
This kept Malaysia in suspense for a number of days.
These events will be brought back to the public through this upcoming court case, and an astute defence team will make Muhyiddin’s case about the legitimacy of Anwar as prime minister.
Its fairly clear that there is a conspiracy or collusion across a number of parties to destroy Muhyiddin so he has no more standing as a leader. The entry of Royalty into the case tried to build up the issue that Muhyiddin has insulted royalty, which won’t go well for him in the Malay heartlands.
That is of course if the Malays don’t see through this plot. However, this case could dreadfully backfire, where the focus could potentially shift to Anwar’s path to the prime ministership. The upcoming case may be more likely to do damage to Anwar, while Muhyiddin’s folk hero status rises in the heartlands.
This is a bad strategy, not to mention Pakatan Harapan once opposed the Sedition Act, and cried foul when these laws were used against them.
Today, the PH crowd have won a little victory, where online portal comments have been anti-Muhyiddin. But in the heartlands Muhyiddin is becoming a hero fighting against an unjust government.
This will be a trial about Anwar’s legitimacy as PM
One only has to look at US politics to see how lawfare is going against Trump.
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One of the very big problms Malaysia's courts suffers from is the poor educational and training basis of its lawyers over the past 4 decades. This has resulted in a very poorly educated and trained judiciary and is reflected in their sub standard decisions over decades.
Malaysia's judiciary like those of many common law countries is said to be hand picked by an independent body whose assessment of their qualities both professional and personal lead to their appointments as judges. Independence and knowledge being at the core of their appointment.
But that convention and practice has not guaranteed anything at all in terms of preserving the quality of justice or the quality of judges who dispense justice from the bench in Malaysia. In fact if at all there is a long line of unbroken authority where judges in Malaysia have dispensed with justice, rather than to dispense justice from the bench.
This practice goes back to Tun Salleh Abbas who was no paragon of virtue when it came to independence at the bench although the groupies of Regime Change would argue otherwise.
A further problem as identified by the academic, Professor Harding in his analysis of the problems facing Malaysia's legal fraternity and its bench's interpretation of the constitution, is that there is no guide nor legislation that could guide judges and lawyers as to how to read and interpret constitutional matters they are faced with.
There is a plethora of embarrassment in Malaysian legal history that underpins Professor Hardings observations in this regard.
It would be difficult for Anwar to successfully prosecute a case of sedition against Muyhiddin if he can't prosecute Bersih, the Malaysian Bar, individual lawyers and judges, politicians and various other organizations such as the Churches, trade unions and those foreign funded so called NGO's who all advocated the overthrow of a duly elected government (of Najibs Barisan) outside the ballot box through incitement and reciept of funds for the purpose from foreign governments. (see ambiga's Malaysia Kini interview in 2009?admitting to having received funds from the Selangor government without lawfful authority for "bigger projects").
Justice is not a cloistered virtue. If it has to have any legitimacy, value, respect or teeth it must be applied equally to all under the principles and objects of the concept of the rule of law (which means no one is above the law). The law cannot be selectively applied as it appears to be in this case.
If Anwar pursues Muyhideen and prosecutes him under the Sedition act without bringing in people like Ambiga, Bersih, C4 and the G25 and others like the Malaysian bar for advocating a violent overthrow of a duly elected goverenment, he is clearly perscuting rather than prosecuting Muyhideen.
Anwar hass outfoxed his enemies (his former allies and friends) by giving them a taste of their own medicine against which they can now not legitimately or morally complain against.
Since being sworn in as PM, Anwar Ibrahim has made a mockery of everything he and his party campaigned for in GE15. The rakyat who voted for him with high hopes of reform must feel like stupid boobs now watching the so-called 'unity' government morph into something far worse than Malaysia has ever had before.
The only reason PMX was given the royal nod was to keep the dreaded PAS and their religious nuttery out of Putrajaya. At the time I breathed a sigh of relief although I have no skin in the game. However, after two years of ridiculous shenanigans from a fake reformer I'm rooting for Mr. Muhyiddin. If the UG can be exposed as the complete fraud that it is, that will be a good thing.
Najib pardoned, Hamidi DNAA, JAKIM now involved in all ministries...and there's still three years before GE16. Hopes were high in November 2022. But because of everything that has happened since then GE15 will be remembered as the biggest joke on the Malaysian people in history.