In a Facebook post reflecting on the Turun Anwar rally last Saturday, Kadir said Anwar’s “handicap” was a perceived lack of foundational knowledge in economics.
“The current economic hardship faced by the people is largely due to Anwar’s over-reliance on technocrats and corporate figures who are disconnected from the general public.
“These elites operate based on profit and loss, taxes and revenue,” he said.
He said such individuals did not feel accountable for the people’s suffering as they saw it as a “politician’s job”.
“For them, if they manage to build strong economic fundamentals and earn praise from international rating agencies, they consider their job done,” he said.
The Turun Anwar rally was organised by PAS Youth, with protesters calling for Anwar to step down as prime minister over the rising cost of living, among others.
According to PAS, some 500,000 protesters turned up although Kuala Lumpur police estimated that only 18,000 people took part in the rally.
Kadir said a single protest was not enough, and that the opposition must keep up the momentum if it was serious about removing Anwar.
“Especially since Anwar himself has ‘challenged’ them to do so,” he said, referring to opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin’s hint that a vote of no confidence would be tabled.
Meanwhile, DAP’s Charles Santiago said it would be “disingenuous” to ignore the fact that some of the protest’s organisers were “far from altruistic”.
He said many of the loudest calls for Anwar’s resignation came from “disgraced politicians and their operatives”, whom he said once drained the public purse and weaponised race and religion but now “masqueraded as reformists” because they had been shut out of power.
“Their rallying cry isn’t justice. It’s vengeance dressed in street theatre,” the former Klang MP said in a Facebook post.
He urged the people not to mistake opportunism for leadership, adding that protests lose moral authority when they are hijacked by “those with dirty hands and no vision beyond their personal vendettas”.
However, he also warned that the rally should serve as a wake-up call, not only for those in power but also for those aspiring to replace them.
He said if the current government could not deliver on its promises of economic justice, inclusivity, and clean governance, it would continue to “haemorrhage public trust, no matter how corrupt its critics are”.
Adding that Malaysians were tired of being asked to choose the lesser evil, he said there was still time for Anwar.
“The remainder of his term must be spent on bold, redistributive policies that protect the most vulnerable and restore faith in the state,” he said.