Mat Sabu hasn't quite put a foot down wrong

In the present climate of Malaysian politics, it has not been easy to combine personal integrity with ideological consistency.

Former adversaries have become allies, past oppressors have mutated into human rights exponents, ex-jailers aspire to be liberators, and inveterate accusers want to be pardon facilitators.

In this topsy-turvy world, one political player has somehow managed to walk a line that credibly combines personal probity with fidelity to political ideals.

Just the other day it seemed that the tenuous line he has been treading had started, alas, to go awry.

But within 48 hours there was a course correction and what appeared like a first wobble for him turned out to be something that instead projected his strengths.

The folds were pared away and all was sweet reason and conciliation when an underling, peeved at his marginalisation, though the better of his quit decision and retracted it. 

In the event, Mohamad Sabu, the president of Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah), as conciliator had added another credit to a steady accumulation of laurels as the principal adhesive in an unlikely assembly of oppositionists called the Coalition of Hope (Pakatan Harapan).

There is not a single major player in this coalition, barring Mat Sabu, as he is popularly referred to, who does not bring baggage that makes him an unsuitable fellow traveller for the Harapan journey of effecting political and economic reform in Malaysia.

Mat Sabu alone is without this baggage which makes his turn on the ceramah circuit, now at its feverish pre-polling height, the most credible and, given his oratorical skills, the most watchable.

The other day, at a public rally to announce Dr Mahathir Mohamad as the Harapan candidate for the parliamentary seat of Langkawi, he unobtrusively went up to the lectern to adjust the microphone for a pallid-looking Mahathir who was unaware that his voice wasn't carrying.

It was a gesture that mirrored Mat Sabu's role and utility to the coalition: the seconds in a prizefighter's corner, useful at patching up the cuts, pouring in the restorative fluids, dabbing the sweat, and pumping up the adrenalin.

Easy to discount but…

In sum, Mat Sabu has become the Harapan man who's easy to discount until the chips are down; then you look for him to bring the sap flowing back into the veins.

He does this mainly through his oratory, notable not so much for the elegance of its language or eloquence of its delivery, but more for the strength and sincerity of its utterance.

When he refers to his days with his original party PAS, before he left to form Amanah, there is no hint of recrimination, only of dismay that his former party is unrecognisable from what it was in his time with it.

That's why his detractors in PAS cannot seem to denounce him with conviction because of his past yeoman service to the party – his references to which bring laughter to his current audiences when he recalls the days in trying to build up support for it in Johor, occasions when there were four speakers on the platform and three people in the audience.

The self-deprecating humour boosts his credibility, displayed to humane extents when, in Gopeng on one occasion in August last year, he reminisced about the privations he suffered under ISA detention in 1987, and the allure of sexual temptation upon his release from Kamunting.

No leader of an Islamic party could be expected to be candid about such disclosures; from Mat Sabu, it seemed like a natural thing to say in the course of his reminiscing, its humanity being absolution for its revelation of something best left unspoken.

When doubts are expressed as to whether Harapan, with Mahathir as its unlikely chair, would implement the reforms – especially the institutional ones – the coalition has touted, one must be reassured to find that Mat Sabu is a major player within its top leadership cohort.

A man like him won't be able to abide the promptings of conscience given his candour and self-deprecation on the electioneering circuit.

If he forgets, that would be the first time he has put his foot down wrong in a career where he has mostly treaded a fine line between the principled and the expedient. 

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others. - Mkini