Pakatan unstuck
If Pakatan does not develop a common policy, institutionalise its activities and procedures, and avoid fractious in-fighting, it does not take clairvoyance to foresee that it will eventually fall to pieces.
NST Editorial
LIKE her information chief, the president of Parti Keadilan Rakyat couldn’t quite resist the predilection for blaming a “hostile” press for its troubles. But she did avoid the propensity for exaggeration found in the former’s claim of a “concerted campaign” to put PKR in an “undeserved bad light”. It is, of course, a matter of interpretation whether the spate of resignations or rumours of resignations are signs of a party “mired in deep internal trouble”. However, as Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail has conceded, it is quite clear that all is not well in the party.
The fact that the dissidents are no longer with the party may not yet make much of a difference. This is not the first time that key leaders have resigned or denounced the de facto party leader, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. However, in as much as it is a truism to assert that the future of a party or nation “does not lie in the hands of any one individual”, this glibly ignores the fact that PKR was formed as a private vehicle for the public ambitions of its “adviser”. For that reason alone, Anwar has been indispensable to PKR, just as he has been undeniably the driving force of the opposition alliance. He was the reason that DAP and Pas were in Pakatan Rakyat to begin with, and he was and is the only one with the background that was needed for them to uneasily lie on the strange bed they made for themselves.
But since the March 2008 election, each side seems to have been moving away from each other. Pas has been showing signs of severe internal strife, and PKR, the glue that is supposed to hold everyone together, seems to be coming unstuck. As the Irish poet William Butler Yeats asserted, when the centre cannot hold, things fall apart. Ironically, the trouble is that PKR is led by a highly divisive leader with a very personal agenda, and the party has been a beacon for rabble-rousers and self-seekers of every political shade. The Pakatan alliance has no common platform other than that it is anti-Barisan Nasional, and whose political rhetoric of social justice and theatrics of human rights matched the mood of an electorate disenchanted with the ruling coalition. At its base, there was no strong and cohesive foundation. If Pakatan does not develop a common policy, institutionalise its activities and procedures, and avoid fractious in-fighting, it does not take clairvoyance to foresee that it will eventually fall to pieces.
