To lord over, or to love and liberate?
The People’s Parliament
“The writing is on the wall. BN will win the next GE. It’s now a matter of whether it will be a landslide. At the very least, BN should win back its two-thirds majority” – my friend, Kee Thuan Chye, sharing his thoughts on the implications of the Galas and Batu Sapi by-election results, as reported in Malaysiakini.
In less than a month, Linda Tsen went from being an obscure part-time music teacher and wife, to that of a widow and then a Member of Parliament.
In that process, she scalped two men who fancied themselves as political big-wigs.
By a majority larger than that garnered by her late husband in 2008.
Sympathy votes?
Sure, but not all 6,000.
Money politics and election goodies?
With BN in the contention, this goes without saying.
Would these, alone, account for Linda’s stellar performance, given that at the outset of campaigning immediately after nomination day, reports from the ground suggested that she was trailing and that SAPP’s Yong was in with a shot at causing an upset?
And, yet, Yong finally ended up polling the least number of votes?
If there was any truth in those initial reports, what happened between then and polling day?
On 21st October, after negotiations between PKR and SAPP to try and get one to withdraw from the contest to facilitate a straight BN / PKR or SAPP contest, broke down, at a press conference at which William Leong for PKR and Yaong for SAPP were in attendance, assurances were given that their respective candidates would not attack each other during the campaign period. Malaysiakini has the report HERE.
However, two days into the 8-day campaign period and this pact was in tatters.
According to Malaysiakini, Yong drew first blood, alluding to the infighting that the PKR party elections has thrown up, and equating a vote for Pakatan as a vote for BN, both being semenanjung ‘sombong’ parties.
That same Malaysiakini report narrates PKR’s Ansari countering that between SAPP and PKR Sabah, the former had lost 4 elected reps or senior leaders through crossovers since the 2008 elections,whilst the latter had not suffered such a calamity.
Ansari seems to have forgotten that the majority of defecting reps that brought down the Pakatan government in Perak were from PKR.
However, if Ansari’s retort seemed mindless, Chua Jui Meng’s won hands down for sheer stupidity.
Chua, Malaysiakini reports, questioned Yong’s track record in politics, and the latter’s having stuck with BN for 16 years.
“I ask Yong to look at his own record when he was chief minister. During his term, did he implement the reform he talks about, especially the autonomy of Sabah? I never heard of him talking about autonomy when he was chief minister”, Chua is reported to have said.
To the thinking voter in Batu Sapi, these idiotic swipes only served to spotlight the can of worms that PKR is increasingly showing itself to be, and raised questions in the minds of these voters, the answers to which are self-evident to anyone who has kept reasonably abreast of the development of politics in the country.
