A hunger strike can’t change the numbers

IN Ipoh, several former state leaders are leading a hunger strike to protest a myriad of issues, chiefly against being ousted from office.

By Zainur Arifin (NST)

Obviously, the way things stand, they know that their not eating for three days will not change a lot of things. Barisan Nasional is not going to call for a fresh election no matter how hungry and frail they become.

Also court judgments that went against them are likely to remain so.

If they want to telegraph their feelings — that they are angry and annoyed after being outmanoeuvred in the state government — I do not think there is any need for mass starvation. There is no ambiguity in this, the whole country knows how angry they are.

Or is their hunger strike in preparation for their case going to the Federal Court?

I believe that for the moment, there are some things that are indisputable; facts with which even a Pakatan Rakyat supporter would agree. The most telling being that the numbers are working in the BN's favour.

The BN now has more support than Pakatan in the state assembly, following the defection of three assemblymen. And with the assemblymen ruled as having not resigned, they count as persons who have added their pledges of support to the BN.

With that majority, they sought the confidence of the royal house of Perak to form a government, and got it after the sultan ascertained that the BN really had the goods.

When Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin got an audience with the sultan, he had lost a simple majority. His call for a dissolution of the assembly, while consequential, was in fact desperate. It was akin to closing the barn door after the horses had bolted.

My conclusion is rather simplistic, of course, and my take of the whole situation could easily be shredded by the now more than two million, and the number is growing daily, constitutional experts in the country. But what cannot be denied are the numbers.

Hence, the opposition is hurt in many ways. Not only did it lose a state, but its self-confidence took some shots, too.

Despite all the bravado Pakatan leaders had shown in promising a coup at the federal level, and promising to take advantage of defections by weak-kneed BN members of parliament, they failed to detect weaknesses among their own and thus lost in their own game of dare.

Now that the court has ruled that Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir is menteri besar, and not Nizar, the options available to Pakatan are reduced further.

Having lost to a unanimous decision by a three-panel Court of Appeal, some in Pakatan are suggesting that a bigger, full panel is desirable at the Federal Court. Are they presuming that the outcome would be different, if there were more judges?

A unanimous decision is frustrating as it offers little room for comfort. But what if even an expanded panel at the Federal Court were to concur? Rage against the world, then? Or perhaps a hunger strike.

One wonders what is the purpose of the hunger strike when not all is lost yet. The Federal Court remains.

A hunger strike, like self-immolation, is a last resort when all else fails. A hunger strike is supposed to be the ultimate sacrifice on the altar of greater good. But is the greater good defined by the return of Pakatan to power?

The time has come for someone in Pakatan to sit down, assess the situation and decide enough is enough, and believe that those who fight and run away will live to fight another day.

Pas once ruled Kelantan by a simple one-seat majority, and with one of the seats won by a majority of two votes. Did anyone complain?

I suppose Pakatan and its supporters are also angry that their righteousness and victim-hood are not doing them much good these days, as if no one was listening. But their righteousness is slowly evolving into tantrums, like a child chucking his rattle out of the pram when he cannot get things his way.

They know that nothing would be done by the BN to cut short its rule in Perak. Only the Federal Court can change things now and tactically, I would speculate, it suits the opposition fine to remain a "victim" of BN and the system.

Maybe it is the strategy to keep the matter on the table, say, with activities like not eating en masse, with an eye fixed on the 13th general election. But that would be too long and tiring.