The Perak Conspiracy...Pt 1

If you wanted to take down a sitting government, how would you do it? There are a few ways.

1. Quietly convince the MB that his administration no longer has the majority support of the assembly and ask him to resign.

2. Force the MB to resign by bringing a vote of no confidence against him in the Dewan.

Either one of these satisfies the requirements of the constitution. There are other options, however.

3. Coup d'etat (peaceful or otherwise)
4. Force resignations via scandal
5. Pressure the government to resign by a popular uprising


Well, before deciding which one is the best option for you, you'd have to do some sort of SWOT analysis. This could possibly be the one that the BN did in Perak's case.

BN's Strengths - MONEY, POWER and the absolute RUTHLESSNESS to use it to achieve any end; a thoroughly infiltrated civil service that hinder PR's full effectiveness; friendly and obedient security forces

BN's Weaknesses - Widely seen as corrupt and inept; becoming more unpopular/irrelevant by the day; lack of quality leadership material.

BN's Opportunities - Only needs to grab 2 seats to form a simple majority; conveniently, 2 PKR men were charged with corruption by the UMNO-controlled MACC; the 2 reps were also tainted with admissions of sexual misconduct; redeem UMNO/BN's image of strength among its supporters should it succeed in wresting power

BN's Threats - the PR govt was becoming more popular by the day; playing the racial card did not seem to have its desired effect so far and in fact seemed to turn people off;


So, based on the SWOT, which option would be suitable for BN to employ?

1. Convince the MB to resign? They had no legitimate grounds. And it would not be UMNO's style to be polite towards their political enemies.

2. Vote of no confidence? They had no legitimate grounds for this as well. And they would not have had a shadow of hope succeeding as the PR has shown themselves to be resilient and united.

3. Military coup d'etat would have been too obvious an abuse of power. A political coup could be an option. No need for legitimate grounds for either of this to happen.

4. There seems little chance of tainting the MB to force his resignation. And besides the 2 PKR reps facing corruption charges, all of the other PR reps seemed to be clean. Even for the 2 PKR reps, the MB stood steadfastly behind them. And the public largely didn't seem to buy the allegations anyway, or they didn't seem to care.

5. Popular uprising? That was happening AGAINST UMNO/BN! So no dice here!


So, based on the above evaluation, a political coup would have been the most tenable option to grab power in Perak.

You could achieve this by inciting the people, as in Thailand, and force the govt to resign. This was UMNO/BN's classic strategy - simply play the race card, threaten May 13, and wait for the subsequent fireworks. Lately however, no matter how hard they tried, Malaysians seemed to be resisting such tactics post-Mar08. Even the UMNO-manufactured crowds at some demonstrations were largely laughed off and the issues were never taken up seriously by the masses. And as said above, UMNO/BN was losing support by the day – a fact that even they couldn't miss.

So really, the only other option would be to engineer political defections. This was quite easy as UMNO/BN merely needed 2 elected reps to defect to secure a simple majority in the Dewan. And of course, we all know that UMNO/BN likes everything quick and easy - money, power (and women too, perhaps?).

So what do you need to get at least 2 people to jump?

to be continued...