Good sense must prevail in these trying times
THE Perak political impasse, viewed with a certain detachment and at some distance from the other side of Malaysia across the sea, exposes a rather scary arrogance from one side of the political divide.
By John Teo (NST)
There seems to be a growing consensus — or so we are led to believe — that a very simple solution exists by way of the expedient of a dissolution of the Perak state assembly and fresh state elections.
I do not think that I am very much alone in defying that supposedly emerging consensus.
It only appears to be a consensus because urban-based sophisticated thinking seems inclined to go along with this key political plank of the Pakatan Rakyat.
While the police may or may not have been heavy-handed in going against a budding Thai-style colour-coded protest action in this country, there seems to be eminent good sense in erring on the side of extreme caution if indeed our own nation is headed in that very ominous direction.
The parallels with Thailand are rather too uncanny for comfort. An opposition that seems to arrogate to itself the right side of history has the unquestioned, even unquestioning, allegiance of urban voters. Rural voters who just as persistently voted for the ruling party are ignored, dismissed and disparaged.
That (in case the dense political fog has clouded our vision) is exactly where we are at right now.
Perak, and to a certain extent the entire nation, is now more or less politically divided right down the middle. Rather than fresh elections healing or altering that divide, there are good reasons to believe that elections — as is often their wont — will only aggravate the divisions. Or at best, nothing much changes after another round of elections.
We will never know if such fears are well founded unless fresh elections are called, which, at the risk of belabouring my point, is exactly why I urge that we all sit back, ponder with all the dispassion we can muster and apply some caution in what we really wish for.
Mature democracies in the West manage with sharply divided electorates largely because their mature societies can afford the light touch of government. It is likely we now need to get used to the same, whether our own society is ready or not.
A sharply divided electorate may be here to stay, with elections fought on a narrow band of swing voters.
There is another Sarawak political precedent other than the Ningkan precedent that we may all want to take to heart. A motley political grouping that managed to muster a majority of state assemblymen in 1986 challenged current Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, who succeeded in getting the state assembly dissolved and fresh elections called to see off the challenge.
The challengers then were a disparate, politically untested group with questionable cohesion. They proved no match for the governing coalition.
In Perak today, both opposing political camps are cohesive and viable governments-in-waiting. The argument on the need for such a blunt and cumbersome instrument as fresh elections after only one year is, therefore, hardly cut-and-dried.
What is desperately needed is for good sense to prevail. And we can definitely do with respected and disinterested individual voices urging for such sense to emerge.
What we most certainly do not need is supposedly independent and non-partisan groups and individuals adding political fuel to the charged atmosphere, or making incomprehensible demands for our politicians to be "non-partisan".
If our democracy is to have any chance to mature, whichever Perak government the courts eventually decide is the legal government should be allowed to serve out its normal term free of further challenges to its legitimacy.
