The Perak Putsch
This is my personal opinion only.
It's May Day for Justice. I am not referring to the book written by Tun Salleh Abas. I am referring to the May 7 Putsch in Perak and the despicable behaviour of lawmakers. It was actually a Coup d'état that will surely guarantee the plotters and perpetrators an ignominious place in history.
All the PR had to do was to give enough rope for the BN people to hang themselves. If it was a putsch, then like such similar events in history, the Munich Beer Hall Putsch and the Algiers Putsch, they will fail. This one in Perak will fail to endear UMNO and BN with the people.
I have been asked about the Perak DUN Perak episode this morning. My opinions are as relevant as the next fellow's. That means, we can't avoid being judgemental. Either we accept or we don't accept what has happened. The following is my personal opinion not necessarily reflecting that of the majority in UMNO.
If we are for it, we can find 1001 excuses to support it. If we are against it, we shall find a similar number of rebuttals. As for me, I will echo what a senior UMNO leader ( who is presently in the government) said in another situation. It has come to a stage where even we (ministers) feel ashamed to ask people to vote for us. This latest Perak Putsch just builds up the resentment of the people.
The general opinion from people on the street? It is not acceptable and further injures UMNO being the backbone of the BN government.
What happened in Perak is no longer amenable to legal niceties. The top legal eagles will have their day in court and if the judiciary is full of correct-correct-correct judges, the decision of the court of law will no longer be relevant. The court of public opinion and the sentence that will follow suit overwhelms everything- you and I, the lawyers and constitutional experts.
Perak will become the political quicksand that will drag Dato Najib in. Unless he gets out from the quicksand either by being pulled out or gabbing a pole as we see in the movies, Perak will prove to be his political waterloo. That will mean, the victory he secured over Anwar Ibrahim in persuading the 3 guys to quit PR, is a pyrrhic victory.
The only honourable thing to do is to remit the whole thing to the rakyat and that means calling for a fresh elections. It's better for UMNO to lose honourably than to win detestably. Unless of course we are deaf to the resentment building up among the rakyat, we will insist on staying. That resentment has reached a stage where what UMNO says is no longer believable and where lies dished out Pakatan and its high priest Anwar are believable. We lose more by our obstinacy.
The thing that people remember was the speaker being forcibly carried out. The photo showing the poor speaker being dragged out will be forever etched in the mind of millions. It was high-handedness at its most foulest.
Let's discuss this a bit.
