There is much to be said for giving any sitting government the space to get on with its business for the duration of its normal term, all the more so given current extraordinary times. There will be those who quite logically argue that a government that took over mid-stream does not deserve this.
That said, the Perikatan Nasional government can, of course, counter argue that it came to power because the then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad resigned, forcing the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government he led.
Fair or otherwise, Senior Minister and International Trade
and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Azmin Ali ended up becoming the main object of wrath for those who lamented PH's fall from grace.
Is the public ridicule and vilification he and other PN ministers now encounter justified or is it all part of the overall opposition campaign to bring down a second government within a single parliamentary term?
Azmin is faulted as the principal person involved in "betraying" his party, his party boss (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) and PH. We may never know the truth of this until or unless he, Anwar and others in the fog of the so-called Sheraton Move sit down one day to put the record straight, maybe in their respective memoirs.
I do not know Azmin personally, but caught a glimpse of him at close quarters when he, as a principal aide, accompanied his boss, Anwar, then deputy prime minister, to visit former minister Tan Sri Effendi Norwawi, the then chairman of the Sarawak Economic Development Corporation, in Kuching. That must have been in the early 1990s.
Nowadays, most of us conveniently forget that Azmin and Anwar go back a long way, from the latter's political heyday to his fall from power in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and the birth of PKR amid the battle-cry of reformasi.
Azmin rose to become PKR deputy leader and served a stint as Selangor menteri besar when Anwar was behind bars. What triggered their eventual falling out after PKR finally attained its quest to govern the country in 2018 will be of more than passing academic interest.
In any case, if Azmin's departure from PKR had been the result of his "unprincipled" political machinations and personal ambition, how does that explain the departure at the same time of two Sarawak PKR leaders noted for their exemplary integrity, former works minister Baru Bian and assemblyman See Chee How?
And as the nation goes through the throes of the current Covid-19 surge, Azmin again becomes the object of much disdain for allowing factories to open and the inevitable clusters of infection to grow. I spoke with Senior Minister and Works Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof several days ago. He wanted it on record that the issue of allowing factories to open had been, like most things, a collective decision arrived at after extensive debate at the National Security Council.
Fadillah revealed that Azmin had explained how these factories are often integral parts of the critical global supply chain. It is never easy to strike the right balance between lives and livelihoods during these pandemic times and, besides, he said it is false to conclude Selangor's high Covid-19 cases are mostly the result of factory clusters when Penang is as much a manufacturing base but does not have nearly as high an incidence of infections as Selangor.
Jockeying for political advantage may be second nature for politicians and political parties and in particular as the pandemic-induced emergency draws to a close. But, as Fadillah stressed, there is a time for everything and allowing the government some political leeway to focus on pandemic relief must be paramount at this moment.
Politicking definitely can and should wait.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak
