Yellow card for the opposition

The market perception is that PKR can't be trusted. The common belief is that the people in PKR can be bought. But it appears like PAS and DAP are bigger slime-balls than PKR. At least PKR did not try to sabotage the forming of the Kelantan, Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor state governments.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER


Raja Petra Kamarudin

Lim Kit Siang is a passionate person. That is not crime I suppose because I too am a passionate person. I am passionate about my wife and I am passionate about Malaysia Today. I expect this passion is required in my line of work and to stay focused for decades on end. I have been with my wife since 1968, one year before May 13, and to spend 40 years with the same woman and still feel like we are on honeymoon does require a lot of passion. I may have been working on Malaysia Today just four years now, but it is four straight years, 365 days a year, morning till evening, with no holidays in between. And six years before that since 1998 I was working on www.freeanwar.com as well as my own website that carried my name. (I was hoping that after ten long, non-stop years I could go into retirement, but it now appears I have more work ahead of me compared to the first ten years before this).

Anyway, back to that passion bit. While Kit Siang and I share the same thing in common, we are both passionate, I would like to believe that my passion is positive while I am yet to decide how to categorise the Grand Old Man of DAP's passion. From where I am sitting, Kit Siang is passionately opposed to Islam and this does not bode well for DAP at all.

But Kit Siang is merely the 'non-executive' Chairman of DAP. Is it not the Secretary-General who has executive powers instead of the Chairman? Why then is Kit Siang making all these damaging statements when in the first place he should not be the one making them. When he was the Secretary-General, he was the one running the party while Chan Man Hin, the Chairman, sat quietly in the background and did not ruffle anyone's feathers. Now that he is the Chairman, Kit Siang should also sit quietly in the background and allow the Secretary-General to run the party like how he did before this when he was the Secretary-General. Kit Siang is not DAP and DAP is not Kit Siang. Apparently, this important fact seems to escape him.

For more than four years now PAS has never touted the Islamic State issue. For all intents and purposes, PAS has practically dropped the Islamic State issue, though they did so silently and gave the issue the decent burial it deserves. Apparently this is still not good enough for Kit Siang. He wants PAS to stand up on a soapbox and openly declare that it is abandoning Islam. Would in that same breath Kit Siang also want PAS to abandon the 'Islam' word in its party name and change the name to Parti Melayu or Parti Malaysia or something like that (because that would be what it would tantamount to)?

In the recent 2008 general election campaign, the DAP ceramahs were practically flooded with PAS flags and T-shirts. Motorcycle convoys with riders wearing PAS T-shirts and carrying PAS flags escorted the DAP candidates as they made their rounds to meet the voters and to speak at the ceramahs. Why did DAP not chase away these people? Some of them were Malays from PAS while many were Indians from Hindraf. Yes, Indians from Hindraf were wearing PAS T-shirts and carrying PAS flags at these DAP events. But no one chided these people or demanded that the 'offensive' PAS paraphernalia openly displayed by PAS and Hindraf activists be removed from sight.

When DAP wants to win votes it does not mind the presence of PAS members or their T-shirts and flags. Now that it has won the votes, DAP does not want to have anything to do with PAS. Hello....brother....it does not work that way. You won with the help of PAS members so now you have to live with them as partners for at least until the next election. Then, in the next election, maybe PAS and DAP can engage in three-corner fights and we shall see who wins the most number of seats.

In both the 1999 and 2004 general elections, DAP could only win 10 seats in Parliament and did not have enough state seats to form the government. Now, not only is DAP's 28 Parliament seats a new record for the party, but it even won enough seats to form the state government in Penang. And this was achieved not just on anti-Islam Chinese votes alone. It required Malay and Indian votes as well to achieve this.

DAP is not an anti-Islam Chinese party. It would get nowhere as an anti-Islam Chinese party. Even Chinese themselves do not want and will not support an anti-Islam Chinese party. Most Chinese are intelligent enough to know that DAP will not get anywhere as an anti-Islam Chinese party. So why this passionate anti-Islam stand?

Is Kit Siang's 'stage-show' merely a distraction from what ails DAP in Selangor? Supporters of Teng Chang Khim, Teresa Kok and Ronnie Liu are locked in battle. Each has their clique that wants to see their candidate installed as the Deputy Menteri Besar of Selangor. But there is no Deputy Menteri Besar post and His Highness the Sultan of Selangor will not appoint one. So why bother to squabble over who should be the candidate to fill a post that does not exist? Yesterday, Teng's supporters held a demonstration to demand that their man gets appointed as the Deputy Menteri Besar. In spite of the announcement that there shall not be any Deputy Menteri Besar, today, they plan to hold another demonstration and MCA and Gerakan are going to send their supporters to help Teng mobilise a crowd of 10,000 to prove that his support is overwhelming. Can we please remember this name and come next election we send him to where Zakaria Deros now resides?

Three names were submitted to His Highness the Sultan of Perak. As they could not agree as to who of the three should be the new Menteri Besar of Perak, they left it to Tuanku in his wisdom to decide who should be the Menteri Besar. Tuanku looked at the State Constitution and Tuanku looked at the candidates. PKR said their candidate is the least qualified of the three and it has no objections to one of the other two from PAS or DAP being selected. PKR does not want to insist on its candidate just for the sake that the Menteri Besar is a PKR man.

Before Tuanku could decide, Ahmad Awang jumped the gun and announced that the Menteri Besar will be from PAS. Even the PAS President was caught by surprise. But the damage had been done so all he could do was hold his tongue. PKR knows that PAS Perak has a mind of its own and is practically uncontrollable. The PAS party structure is such that each state is independent, practically autonomous, unlike Umno where the President rules with an iron fist like the true dictator that he is. Even the Umno President's son-in-law has more power than the state heads of Umno who most times would also be the Chief Minister (Menteri Besar) of that state. There is of course both good and bad in such an arrangement but there is certainly more good than bad as Umno has so many times proven.

So PAS Perak jumped the gun. The PAS central leadership bit their lips and allowed the 'transgression' to pass. PKR too, in the spirit of comradeship, decided to say nothing lest it upset the delicate partnership that was in the midst of being formed and had yet to take off. But DAP decided to oppose it and to boycott the swearing in of the new government, giving the impression it was still anti-Islam in spite of the strong presence of PAS in DAP's recent election campaign and in spite of the large number of Malay votes it garnered to be able to do as well as it did.

PAS, too, has not been too honest about what happened in Perak. It realises that DAP would not be too comfortable with a PAS Menteri Besar so it stole the thunder and hoped that the 'early announcement' would 'lock' DAP and PKR and leave them no more room for negotiations. PKR was quite happy to not negotiate the issue anyway so the 'hijacking' was totally unnecessary. It just made matters worse when the end result was a hopping mad DAP that would rather see Perak fall back to Barisan Nasional than a PAS Menteri Besar taking charge of the state.

In Selangor, Hassan Ali engaged in secret negotiations with Khir Toyo to explore the possibility of PAS forming an alliance with Umno to jointly rule the state. This alliance would of course exclude PKR and DAP who were going to be Menteri Besar and Deputy Menteri Besar respectively. The delay in forming the state government due to the disagreements and the DAP infighting about who should be the Deputy Menteri Besar meant that this would give Hassan and Khir time to come to an agreement. But they could not come to an agreement because both Hassan and Khir wanted to be Menteri Besar and none would back down in favour of the other.

This is treason of the highest degree and Hassan Ali should be tied to a tree and shot. I would do that myself if not for the fact that I would like to live a couple of years longer instead of being hanged by the neck until I die before the year is out.

The market perception is that PKR can't be trusted. The common belief is that the people in PKR can be bought. In fact, Azalina did buy off one PKR candidate for RM1 million so that she could win the election uncontested. And in other parts of Malaysia a couple of other PKR candidates were bought off as well, the going price being RM1 million per head. But it appears like PAS and DAP are bigger slime-balls than PKR. At least PKR did not try to sabotage the forming of the Kelantan, Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor state governments.

The opposition parties have disappointed more than 50% of Peninsular Malaysia voters who gave them five states and helped deny Barisan Nasional its two-thirds majority in Parliament. Consider this your yellow card. If you are not careful, Barisan Nasional can call for an election on 8 March 2011, the earliest legally allowed, and the voters will give the opposition its red card. Then the opposition can be sent back to where it came from, a dog barking at a hill (anjing salak bukit). Maybe that is all the opposition is good for. Maybe all the opposition is capable of doing is to bark at the hill while Barisan Nasional just laughs at them and asks them to go back to China or India or wherever it is that they came from.

Lim Kit Siang said Barisan Rakyat does not exist. Hello....brother.....it does exist lah. Barisan Rakyat is the people's front or people's movement. This is the people's power or makkal sakhti that we screamed at every ceramah for two weeks leading to the 8 March 2008 general election. Barisan Rakyat is not Barisan Alternatif lah. Barisan Alternatif is a two-party coalition comprising of PAS and PKR, which DAP was also once a member of. Barisan Rakyat, however, is the people's front. It is a movement of people who support all those six political parties which endorsed THE PEOPLE'S VOICE and THE PEOPLE'S DECLARATION just before the recent general election. Barisan Alternatif, the two-party coalition (plus DAP of course) did not win the recent general election. The recent general election was won by Barisan Rakyat, the people's movement, a coalition of all races.

Let me tell you, my dear Kit, that Barisan Rakyat not only does exist but is also a very potent force. Barisan Rakyat will decide who gets to form the government. And Barisan Rakyat can also kick you out and change the government if you do not perform or you misbehave. And, today, Barisan Rakyat has given you a yellow card. Don't force Barisan Rakyat to give you a red card the next time around.

Makkal sakhti. Suara rakyat, suara keramat. People's power.