Anwar Ibrahim said he may call it quits should he fail to wrest power in the pivotal 13th general elections (GE13). In an interview with the Financial Times published today, the Opposition leader said that, “…if I get a mandate, I continue, otherwise I think I’ll go back to teaching."

It won’t be surprising for many to take Anwar’s statement on FT as a mere political rhetoric aimed at increasing voters’ awareness on how crucial GE13 is and Pakatan’s aspiration to win it. After all, love him or hate him, the 64-year-old former deputy prime minister is a seasoned politician who’s been in the game as a high ranked leader on both side of the political aisle. And this means he knows his rivals – who were his former teammates – all too well.


Anwar’s Successor

On the other hand, if indeed he’s not playing us, it will no doubt have a significant impact on the opposition as well as the political landscape, for better or worse. And the most interesting question here is who will be the one to succeed Anwar as Opposition leader? Will he or she be from PKR, PAS or DAP?

The most obvious candidates would be the following:

• PKR president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail
• PKR deputy president Azmin Ali
• PKR vice president Nurul Izzah Anwar
• PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang
• PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu
• DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng

This will be tricky one for Anwar who is yet to reveal the shadow cabinet. In one hand, he would naturally want someone from his party to be his successor. Even so, he has to make the tough call of deciding between his own blood – wife Wan Azizah and daughter Nurul Izzah – or his blue-eyed boy Azmin. Either way, it will be a controversial call. On one hand, if he chooses one of his family members it would be seen as nepotism, while, on the other hand, if he chooses Azmin it would be seen as cronyism.

Meanwhile, like it or not, the dispute will arise to whether Anwar should relinquish his post to a non-Malay. Surely many in DAP want their hero Lim Guan Eng to take charge of Pakatan but it’s uncertain to whether its PAS and PKR partners would be open to this. As it is, we can’t ignore the blinding contrast of ideology between DAP and PAS. For one, there’s an unsettled rift over hudud law between these two parties with DAP chairman Karpal Singh making famous his words of defiance against the implementation of the Islamic law, by saying “over my dead body…” In the meantime, Abdul Hadi has refused to budge on this issue.

As for potential candidates from PAS, it is pretty obvious that people, especially the non-Malays are more receptive to Mohamad Sabu aka Mat Sabu than Abdul Hadi. However, as Opposition leader, the two are not of the same caliber as the late party president and opposition leader Fadzil Noor who was the first to come up with a shadow cabinet. Not only that, He was also instrumental in coming up with a budget which outshone the government budget. Fadzil turned the opposition into a true ‘shadow government’ and government-in-waiting. We don’t see that happening with the Opposition of the day.


The Road to GE13

By now, every Malaysian voter is pretty much aware that the coming 13th General Election (GE13) would be the best chance for the Opposition to take over as government for the first time ever. In the historic 2008 elections, dubbed the ‘political tsunami’, the Opposition denied the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) their traditional two-thirds majority. GE12 also saw Pakatan Rakyat taking over Penang, Kedah, Selangor and Perak (at least for a few months) while retaining Kelantan.

BN’s ‘close call’ in the last election, however, was said to be due to protest votes, a fluke, even. It was the rampant corruption by BN which made angry voters gang up and show their dissatisfaction against the ruling coalition. Meanwhile, it is also said that the PAS-PKR-DAP alliance was a ‘marriage of convenience’ and that the tripartite was based on hatred (for BN), not love.

Despite these sideswipes by the pro-BN as well as pro-Opposition who rightly choose to be critical of Pakatan, we can’t deny that the opposition pact have come a long way since the coalition was formed.  We also can’t deny that it was Anwar who made it happen by succeeding in coaxing PAS and DAP to set aside their differences by teaming up for a common goal which is to oust BN by hook or by fluke. But, besides that, has he done a good job as the leader and lynchpin of the Opposition pact? Only the result of the election will tell, but one thing for sure is it would be very doubtful that Anwar will be entirely out of the picture should Pakatan fail to prevail in GE13.

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