Last Monday (7 July), Rafizi made a call for Anwar's role in the appointment of the country's top judges to be subjected to scrutiny via a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI).
In the press statement he released, his call was supported by 9 PKR MPs, including himself. Other than being concerned about the state of "judicial independence and integrity" in the country, the 9 PKR MPs also likely shared another thing in common — which is that they probably belonged to the biggest losers camp in the PKR party elections that took place around a month and a half ago, in May.
Three of the main proponents of the RCI call — Nik Nazmi, Rafizi and Wong Chen — who sat at the front of the press conference on Monday were definitely the PKR election's biggest losers. Rafizi and Nik Nazmi were undoubtedly the two biggest losers — Rafizi lost his number two position while Nik Nazmi couldn't defend his vice president post. Both resigned from their Cabinet positions not long after their election defeats.
Wong Chen also lost his seat in the PKR Central Leadership Council, and the PKR number two in Subang — where Wong Chen serves as MP — has himself called for Wong Chen to be dropped as the PH candidate for the next general election.
While I don’t know the exact status of the other six MPs supporting Rafizi, Wong Chen, and Nik Nazmi in calling for Anwar to be subjected to a RCI over judicial appointments, I’ll bet you RM1.30 that all six of them were probably losers in the May PKR elections too.
And it’s not just losers from PKR who are backing Rafizi’s call — losers from other party elections are also doing the same.
Teresa Kok, the DAP MP for Seputeh who lost both her vice-chairman post and her position in the Central Executive Committee during the DAP elections last May, is unsurprisingly supporting Rafizi's call for an RCI .
Another major loser from DAP — P. Ramasamy, the former Deputy Chief Minister of Penang — who was unceremoniously dropped from the Penang state election lineup in 2022 and who in a huff, had left DAP to form the “neither-here-nor-there, neither-Indian-nor-not-Indian” party Urimai, has also, unsurprisingly, has joined the chorus of losers calling for an RCI on judicial appointments.
So far, the call to subject Anwar to an RCI is only attracting attention from a cohort of losers. Nobody else seems to care.
PAS gave a half-hearted conditional offer to support the RCI call — but only if Rafizi joined their street protest on July 26.
Judging by how Rafizi responded to PAS’s offer, it doesn’t look like PAS will be supporting him anytime soon.
Not only did Rafizi disagree with PAS’s condition, he went a step further and slammed them by accusing them of trying to ride on the issue for political benefit.
“PAS always talks about mature politics. Mature politics means objectively expressing our views on issues of public interest.
“If our views seem similar, it does not mean we stand together on the stage of party politics,” Rafizi said in a Facebook post.
If I were PAS, instead of seeing Rafizi's rebuke as a sign that he’s a principled politician acting out of concern for justice and reform, I’d probably just interpret it as Rafizi not wanting to share credit for championing the issue.
Anyway, seeing how this issue is so far only attracting the attention of political losers, I’d say that, like a short rain on a hot day, the “subject Anwar to a RCI” campaign is most likely going to disappear without a trace in a couple of weeks.
The only force that can truly compel Anwar to be answerable regarding his role in judicial appointments is the people. But to be brutally honest, the people don’t see — or care — about whatever issue that Rafizi and his defeated PKR allies are trying to raise about judicial appointment.
According to Rafizi and his camp, what’s happening with judicial appointments is the country’s "top priority" and a constitutional crisis. But because he’s been speaking in a roundabout, technical, procedural, pedantic and bureaucratic fashion, nobody — other than maybe a sliver of people in Bangsar or Mont Kiara, and a few foreign correspondents for Al Jazeera or CNA — knows or cares about what he’s talking about.
People might root for the underdog, but they follow winners. What’s certain, though, is that they avoid losers like the plague.
Other than maybe earning a pat on the back next time they walk into a café in Bangsar or Mont Kiara, or maybe getting an invitation to appear on CNA or Al Jazeera, I doubt this entire affair is going anywhere.
Even Rafizi probably knows it. That is why he's already planning to launch a social enterprise platform named “Ayuh Malaysia” on July 27 — a platform he claims won’t be like profit-oriented businesses or donation-reliant NGOs, but will still empower local communities to carry out effective and self-sustaining economic activities.
Even someone setting up a roadside burger stall would at least give the venture two months of their full effort and attention to make it work. The fact that Rafizi can’t even give a month to an issue he is calling the “top priority for the country” and a “judicial crisis” tells us that even he doesn’t believe this RCI push will go anywhere.
If you yourself think you are going to fail in doing something, why start it in the first place, you ask?
Well, I’ll leave you with a quote from Eric Hoffer to help explain:
“Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. For when we fail in attempting the possible, the blame is solely ours; but when we fail in attempting the impossible, we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task. There is less risk in being discredited when trying the impossible than when trying the possible. It is thus that failure in everyday affairs often breeds an extravagant audacity.”
In other words, what Eric Hoffer is saying is that it’s just in the nature of losers to do things with the aim to fail spectacularly rather than succeed modestly.
I think Rafizi needs to be careful.
Since losing the PKR election, everything he’s done — from resigning his ministerial post, to criticizing his own team via his rebranded podcast, to now instigating public calls for an RCI against Anwar — is starting to give him the image of a sore, inveterate loser.
Once people start seeing you as a loser who, given the choice between winning quietly or losing dramatically, will always choose the latter, there’s no turning back.
Like I said: people admire fighters, follow winners — but losers, especially those who love to lose spectacularly, are avoided like the plague.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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