Who cares about party loyalty when you’re promised better things (government/party posts or money) if you were to defect to the other side. Any politician would be more than happy to do so if it guarantees them a cabinet post, well in Malaysia anyway, with very few exceptions of course. For most Malaysian politicians switching sides is a more of a matter of ‘how much’ rather than principle. An embarrassing example would be the Perak power grab ordeal in 2009 which saw three thick-skinned opposition state assembly members crossing over (or rather, bought over) to the BN resulting in a constitutional crisis.

Let’s face it, the career goal of any politician, whether from Barisan Nasional (BN), the opposition or independent, is to be a minister (or chief minister or mentri besar or, maybe, mayor) and, for the more ambitious ones, the prime minister’s post would be their ultimate goal.

The same goes with our young and ambitious Umno poster boy Khairy Jamaluddin. As we saw in his recent debate with Rafizi Ramly, when the latter said he accepts Khairy’s decision to stick to BN (Rafizi had earlier invited Khairy to join Pakatan after the 13th General Election), the Umno Youth chief responded by saying, “I didn’t say that”. In fact, he said this twice.

Despite criticisms over the Khairy not being allowed to put his foot in the Cabinet door his future in politics is still far from dull. He had a good start and rose quickly but he’s also no stranger to controversy. For one, he can’t run away from the fact that his marriage to a former prime minister (who happens to be the PM at the time Khairy secured his Pemuda chief post) has helped him (in more than one way) get access to the top ranks of the party’s Youth leadership as well as parliament. Of course it would be more advantageous if he had been the then prime minister’s son (instead of son-in-law) and if it was a different prime minister for that matter. However, being related to a premier by marriage is better than having no relation to him at all…

It would certainly be interesting to see Khairy switch to the other side. He’s already shown that a lot of the time the cause he’s been championing is the same as that of Pakatan. Like Rafizi puts it, “Most of the time, you sound like us (PKR)”. However, one thing for sure is the rest of the Pakatan leaders won’t be nearly as friendly towards him as Rafizi was during the ‘friendly’ debate. On the contrary, he’ll likely be snubbed by many of his former opponents like how former MCA vice president Chua Jui Meng has been treated by DAP after defecting to PKR. Then again, there will always be frictions and factions within any party and so far Khairy have managed to survive the political undercurrent within Umno. The rich kid has been holding up pretty well despite having a fair share of adversaries, namely the M-team in Umno (Mukhriz Mahathir, Mahathir Mohamad and Muhyiddin Yassin).

Another thing that’s certain is the current BN Youth chief would most likely defect if Pakatan wins the coming election. After all, – looking from an opportunist’s perspective – if you want to be part of a team, it might as well be the one which is the winner.

So far it looks like nothing can stop this wonder boy from moving up in the world of politics. He may not have a ministerial post but he might just get one (and a datukship too) if and after BN wins the next election. But if Pakatan wins, defections to the winning party would be inevitable and, truth be told, Khairy won’t be the only BN leader to turn against Umno.

*The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer.