Traitors and treachery!

If ever elected representatives are turned into renegades and turncoats, we must not only punish these traitors in the next round of elections but we must severely punish the party that encourages treachery, writes P Ramakrishnan.

Pakatan doesn’t need an enemy to destroy it. It can self-destruct quite easily – thanks to coalition partner Parti Keadilan Rakyat!

The undercurrent that has been simmering for some time has finally surfaced with its Bayan Baru MP,Datuk Zahrain Mohamed Hashim lashing out at the Penang Chief Minister  publicly accusing him of being “dictatorial, chauvinistic and communist-minded”.

The latest to join the fray is the Nibong Tebal MP,Tan Tee Beng, lambasting the Penang Chief Minister as “a CM with no class.” He further castigates him by stating, “Whatever he cannot do, he blames it on the previous state government…he wants to portray himself as a Chinese hero…”

From the public’s perspective, there are several MPs in PKR who have taken public positions contrary to the stated aims of the party thus undermining its credibility as a viable component of the Pakatan Rakyat.

Word has it that some of them are daring the party to take action against them. In fact, they are provoking the party to discipline them which would make it easier for them to leave the party.

Their defiance is blatant and deliberate. This only gives credence to the belief that there are unannounced plans afoot to justify their joining the Barisan Nasional.

There is talk that Umno is trying to entice them to cross over to destabilise the Pakatan. Overtures have been made, it is claimed, to encourage this but it has not been revealed what the price would be. To be sure it must be hefty! It can go into tens of millions per head to provide sufficient inducement to whet the appetite of the greedy and make it alluring enough to abandon principles and ethics.

Having successfully subverted the Pakatan government in Perak, the BN especially Umno is now hard at work to achieve two immediate objectives.

Objective number one is to topple the Pakatan Selangor state government and take over the richest state. All it takes is for seven state assemblymen to be bought over and you have the Selangor state in your pocket!

Objective number two is to regain its traditional two third majority in parliament. Again, all it takes is for nine MPs to jump ship.

These objectives are achievable when they feed the greed of certain people with tens of millions of ringgit and corrupt them to switch party. This is how they will turn certain people into traitors and force them to commit treachery.

When it comes to ill-gotten wealth, unscrupulous people have no qualms in betraying the voters’ trust. These are people who have no character or ethics to fall back on and stand firm on moral grounds.

Let’s remember when treachery is committed it is not against the political party alone but in actual fact it is against the Malaysian voters and against democracy. Treachery is the betrayal of thousands of voters who had elected these people in good faith and put their trust and hope in voting for them.

People fed up with the old politics wanted a change for the betterment of the country and that’s why they voted for a string of opposition candidates. If voters wanted to retain the tainted and corrupted old politics and politicians, they wouldn’t have cast their votes for these opposition politicians.

If ever these duly elected politicians now turn into renegades and turncoats, we must not only punish these traitors in the next round of elections but we must severely punish the party that encourages treachery.

When we give a simple majority to the Opposition, it is clearly possible to subvert our will through corruption. It is easy to buy a few representatives. But when we give the Opposition a bigger majority, it will be very difficult to frustrate the peoples’ mandate.

Let’s do a better job when the 13th General Election takes place. Let’s not only give the Opposition a better majority, it would be even better to reverse the roles and give the Opposition a chance to rule Malaysia.

P Ramakrishnan is president of Aliran.