Stay put and strive, Rafizi

Stay put and strive, Rafizi

The worst nostrum for the angst that former PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli can feel over his unmoored situation would be the formation of a splinter party.

Rafizi is without position in PKR, and after resigning from his ministerial post, is without elevation in the national political landscape.

But he is not without ballast, thanks to initiatives he devised over the years of rise in the PKR hierarchy.

Rafizi failed in his defence of his deputy president’s post in PKR not because of his demerits vis-à-vis challenger Nurul Izzah Anwar, but because of the cachet attached to Izzah’s name — as a kind of heir to her father Anwar Ibrahim.

That cachet will wear off when it is seen as having been unearned.

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Voters in her family’s former bastion of Permatang Pauh already thought so by sending her to defeat against a PAS non-entity in the parliamentary election in November 2022.

Rafizi may have to wait out in the political wilderness for some time for fortunes to change which could favour him.

A spell in this wilderness could prompt useful commiseration over the tactics he employed in his campaign against rival Azmin Ali in the deputy president’s contest in PKR elections in 2018.

Those tactics had an echo in the methods employed when bundling Rafizi into defeat against Izzah earlier this year in the PKR polls.

What goes around comes around.

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Leaving PKR to form a splinter party will only add to the plethora of parties inhabiting the political landscape.

Voters are sick of the deluge and have lost count.

Besides, the reformasi programme that PKR has enunciated and stoked over the last 26 years has not lost its appeal.

This despite Anwar’s amnesia about it.

True, Pakatan Harapan’s indecisive advantage in the November 2022 general election did not give coalition supremo Anwar a mandate to introduce deep political and economic reforms.

But Anwar’s preference for rhetoric over action only served to call attention to the shortfall.

A stance of waiting in the wings, accompanied by sharply aimed but not antagonistically articulated critiques of Madani government practices, will stand Rafizi in better stead than going out on a limb to form a new party.

Continued fidelity to the party and its yet-unfulfilled reformasi programme will redound to Rafizi’s advantage.

A creative spell in the wilderness as distinct to apostasy should add lustre to his credentials.

In the event, past loss can leverage future gain.