[Artikel ini disiarkan oleh The Malaysian Insider 6 Februari 2009 dengan tajuk Impatience, again, is Anwar’s Achilles heel ]
He did something that no one in 50 years could ever do. He united the disparate opposition and in one fell swoop, captured four states from Barisan Nasional and made it lose its customary two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, however, has an Achilles heel. Impatience.
The same impatience that saw him fall of his pedestal of a heartbeat away from becoming prime minister after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad or as his one-time-nemesis-and-now-ally Lim Kit Siang sarcastically put it then, the prime-minister-in-waiting.
Former Gerakan leader Datuk Seri Lim Keng Yaik underlined the point after the BN electoral debacle last year when Anwar boldly predicted he will capture Putrajaya by Malaysia Day.
“Anwar showed his impatience inside and outside Umno, he fought Tun Mahathir Mohamad when he was in Umno and now, as he no longer belongs to Umno, he tried to bribe BN elected MPs to switch parties,” Lim said in an interview.
The blunt politican believed that Anwar would have been successful to capture Putrajaya if he was patient and waited until the next general elections when his electoral pact has more influence in Sabah and Sarawak rather than luring BN lawmakers now.
But the Pakatan Rakyat de facto leader was impatient and on Jan 25, he unveiled his latest catch, Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasharudin Hashim. Getting a sitting Umno lawmaker was a coup de grace.
But things have gone horribly wrong for him since then.
Today, the Pakatan Rakyat government in Perak is on its last legs. Nasharudin has leapt back to the welcoming arms of Umno and three others in the electoral pact have turned independent and now express support for the BN.
The Perak sultan has ordered the Pakatan Rakyat government to step down. The State Secretary has told them to vacate their offices and return the keys to their official Toyota Camry cars. They exist only with the support of an electorate angry and bewildered by the lightning pace of events.
They still have tonight as a government in name. Tomorrow, Sultan Azlan Shah will swear in a BN government at 3.30pm in his Istana Iskandariah in Kuala Kangsar. just 30 days away from Pakatan Rakyat’s first anniversary of their historic March 8 victory.
Anwar’s coup de grace has become a coup d’etat against the Pakatan Rakyat.
And Anwar? He rallies his troops of supporters tonight in Ipoh speaking about people power.
Yet it is his impatience for power that has put Pakatan Rakyat on par with BN in terms of their political values by accepting defectors or katak in the local parlance. By being impatient to score political points against Umno, he lost the battle for Perak.
In the eyes of many Malaysians, the Pakatan Rakyat parties had embodied a higher moral and value system than BN, that they would not stoop so low to unseat a government, notwithstanding Anwar’s longstanding boast of doing so by last September 16.
But Anwar is reaping what he has sowed. He drew first blood and a wounded Umno, still licking its wounds from two straight losses in as many by-elections since March 8, fought back with all their might.
They were patient. Anwar was not.
They will now form the Perak government. Anwar’s allies will not, any longer.
