Road to political change
Azmi Sharom
“Our country needs a two-party system. Not as a panacea to all the nation’s ills, but as an important first step towards a vibrant democracy where there will be greater hope for things to improve.”
I READ an interesting article criticising the Penang Government for being too business-friendly. In other words, the Pakatan government is behaving in the same capitalist fashion as the former Barisan Nasional government.
Examples that were used included the continued development of hillside land.
A similar complaint has been made against the Selangor Government which has apparently softened its outright ban on hillside development.
The writer of the article claims that this is because of the powerful business lobby, namely the developers lobby.
He may very well have a point, but one line struck me.
He said that this kind of behaviour by Pakatan suggests that a two party-system makes little or no difference.
After all, what is the point of having one bunch of capitalist to replace another? Shouldn’t we have a real choice with truly different parties and different ideologies?
To be fair to Pakatan, even if they are closet capitalists, they do have a different stance than Barisan and that is their non-race-based policy. To me, that is a pretty big and important difference.
