Arresting Muhyiddin Yassin in Malaysia?

Okay. So this is alarming. But perhaps more than alarming, it's just an incredibly bad idea from a PR point of view and from a political point of view. Because, look, let's face it. From the outside, whatever the case may actually be, from the outside, this obviously looks like Anwar Ibrahim persecuting his political rivals, persecuting the political opposition, persecuting the party that is the most likely to win the next general election because it's the party that did really, really well in the last general election, and it's the party that has the majority of Malay and young voter support.

So saying that you're gonna put Tansri Muhedin Yassin, the former prime minister of Malaysia, in prison, you're gonna arrest him. This looks very, very bad. Now, obviously, I don't know what evidence they may or may not have against Mahedin. But just from a political standpoint, this more or less guarantees that the future of Malaysian politics and the future of the Malaysian government belongs to PN, to Parikhita Nasional. Because, look, they already have the majority of Malay support.

This move will alienate the Malays even more from Parikatan Harapan, even more from Anwar Ibrahim. This move will alienate young people more from Pakistan Harappan, and it will incline people more towards Pakistan National. I mean, arresting Muhyiddin is potentially the best thing that you could do for his political career. I don't know what they're thinking. Again, they may have maybe they've got some kind of secret evidence that nobody knows about that actually shows that there's some justification for this arrest.

But, again, the way it looks from the outside is that this is the Pakistan Harapan UNO government maintaining the status quo, doing what they have to do to maintain the status quo, which is basically maintaining the UNO status quo with a symbolic Anwar to make it look like it's not just the status quo. Anwar has presented himself and has been presented to the world as mister democracy, mister freedom, mister human rights, mister progressive. But what it's gonna look like to everyone is that he he is prosecuting his political rivals. He's prosecuting the political opposition. He is prosecuting specifically the man who is the most likely to take over the government after him.

Now we have to assume we have to assume that it's a genuine legal undertaking, that they genuinely have evidence that, justifies this arrest. I can't say whether or not it's justified because I don't know what the what what evidence they may or may not have. But I can say from a public relations political perspective, it's a catastrophic move for them to arrest Mohdin. Now I will say that it's unusual that they would leak the information that Muhaddin is going to be arrested rather than it reaching the news once he is arrested. So it's almost as if they are putting this as a feeler out to the public to gauge what the reaction would be if we do that.

We wanna know what the reaction of the population will be if we were hypothetically going to arrest the leader of the opposition. It remains to be seen what's actually gonna happen. If they have any flexibility about how to pursue this, I would imagine that anyone with political acumen who would be advising Anwar would be telling him, maybe it's probably not the best move to arrest your political rivals, especially in the lead up to state elections, which the party of your political rival is likely to win. Looks bad. It looks Banana Republic ish, you know, to to to anyone outside.

But I mean, if they have evidence and proceed, what to do? It's impossible for this to not be political in the minds of the public. In the minds of most Malay voters, they're not on board with this so called unity government, isn't a unity government. It's a coalition government between Oumno and PH with an opposition. The majority of the population who were Malay and young people are not on board with that coalition.

They're on board with the opposition. And now you're gonna go after the opposition. So like I said, you're gonna alienate the malaise even more. You're gonna alienate young people even more. And it looks very much like this party is just interested in maintaining the long standing status quo of which party is in power.

And, they just have a a liberal figurehead, a liberal progressive figurehead symbolic leader, to make it look like things have changed. But in the meantime, all you're doing is making sure that nothing can change.