HE last seven days in Malaysia was an education of a Shakespearean kind. Dead though the bard is, he speaks still. “Chaos in KL”, The Economist newspaper called it. You have to give it to the English, the most insular of all people. They and their alliterative headlines are an English education itself.
Just three words, cleverly chosen to tell the entire story. Never was diction given a better play. Offended though we may be, we can’t blame them, can we?
After all, we brought the drama on ourselves. In that one week, there was drama aplenty: a resignation, a retraction and a reappearance. Resigned to remain, was the crafty construction of the English weekly describing Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad being prime minister at one moment and an interim prime minister at another.
Is it the case of the pen of the Empire striking back? The Economist has at times been too clever for its own good. If it were Singapore, the newspaper will have a lawyer’s letter by now. But I am digressing. Just those seven days taught us about men and their machinations that no school on Earth could have.
About power and how some men are drawn to it like suicidal moths. Admittedly, power entices and absolute power entices absolutely.
Politics is after all the art of the possible. There is a price to be paid, though. Here we have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies. Enemies do come together to beat common enemies. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Sometimes they lose themselves.
There was much pretension to expertise, too. In that week of worry, “political analysts” were all tittle-tattle about this and that possibility. Predictions were dished out about this man or that man being a prime minister. To prove that they were mere mushrooms after a storm, a third man appeared from nowhere to earn a seat in Putrajaya. None expected this man from Pagoh to make the list.
Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was sworn in as the eighth prime minister of Malaysia on Sunday morning. The lesson is this: if you have an expertise, just stick to it. Do not stray into disaster. It is neither good for you nor the institution you represent.
Politics is a minefield. Just analyse; don’t predict. The future isn’t the business of men. And so we watched, from the periphery, the tempest that raged at the centre. There was a certain charm, aesthetic power even, to look on from afar as a spectator. Those who got near it must have had the strength to withstand the irony that was being spewed out as the camera shifted its attention from one dramatis persona to another. Never had politics so much free airtime.
Some saw a few big men. Some, the petty machinations of many small ones. If this is good life, we must want another.
Crisis brings out the best and the worst in men. We saw that last Monday. And more days that came later. And if you thought it ended on Sunday, think again. Today is Tuesday and we are still not done yet. The days of politics are not numbered, but those of the politicians are.
There will be fair-weather friends for sure. They will be there on sunny days, shades and all. But when the sky darkens they are nowhere to be seen. There will be the rare being: friends of the through-thick-and-thin kind. We are peculiar beings. When someone has position, we swoon and supplicate. Just fragments of favours will do, we seem to say.
These dirty days, friendship comes with a price tag. And only the devil can afford it (No Prada insinuation here). Oprah Winfrey said it well: “Lots of people want to ride with you in a limo, but what you want is someone who will take a bus with you when the limo breaks down.” Will we? We must learn how to lose fair-weather friends like we would weight.
Machination of men is an old disease. The old bard knew it. There is rage, revenge and some such pestilence aplenty.
There is an Iago wherever you turn. But the fault is not in Iago alone. We become Othellos ourselves, ready meat for him to feed on. An Iago is only possible because there is an Othello. For Iago knows we all have our own Desdemonas. An Othello does at times agonise over empty fiction set in motion by Iago. Love is
thus slayed. And friendship butchered. In the meanwhile and meantime, the rich get richer and the poor have more children.
Are politicians terribly unlucky? Shakespeare has his examples. Juliet wakes up a minute too late. Desdemona loses her handkerchief at the only moment that matters. Do politicians face such fate? The camera may not have shown it, but the Juliet and Desdemona moments were there for sure.
I end with the borrowed words of Shakespearean scholar A.C. Bradley: “The movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time becomes a monstrous flood which spreads over the kingdom.”
Sure true of Shakespearean tragedy as it is of politics. Whatsoever the politician dreams of doing, he achieves that which he least dreamed of.
The writer is NST leader writer
Credited to NST https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2020/03/571110/bards-eye-view