What Zaid did instead
Clearly the issue is not the elections. Otherwise that would have been his focus. To brush aside requests for proof and details while claiming to have tapes and statements tells me that he is not interested in redressing the weaknesses of the elections. He is interested in maintaining the suspicion that Anwar and Azmin has been committing systematic election fraud.
By TK Tan
In an interview with The Malaysian Insider the day he announced his decision to withdraw from the PKR deputy president race, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim said that he did not want to speak any longer on the issue and expressed hope that his decision would be accepted and that he be left alone.
“I do not want to talk any more. I think enough has been said, there is nothing left to say,” he said. He also refused to comment on the negative impact his decision would have on the public’s already flailing popularity. “I do not know. Why don’t you ask the party’s supreme leaders?” he said. He added that from now on he would lay low and concentrate on other things in his life. “I have a lot of things going on in my life other than the party,” he said.
I thought that was a good idea and wrote about it in the article “What Zaid should do”.
To my surprise the headlines that blared at me from The Sun front page on Wednesday said, “Anwar, Azmin must step down”. It seems he called a press conference at his house on Tuesday.
What he said at this press conference certainly changed my view of the man, which is why I thought I should write a follow-up article to my previous one.
As I have said many times, my opinion is formed by what I read. I am not an insider and am not privy to inside stories. I actually don’t like inside stories as then I am totally dependent on the person telling me the story. There is no way for me to form an independent opinion.
Zaid’s resignation reflected poorly on him but I was willing to attribute it to political naiveness—an “all-or-nothing” attitude that idealists often carry. He needs to see that while resigning from a ministerial position, something coveted by many, over a fundamental principle (and the fact that he was in a lame duck position), is admirable, resigning from all positions in a political party which he joined to, in his own words, “promote enlightened and progressive politics; nurture and develop principled political values and culture that I consider indispensable to the development of democracy and good governance in this country”, is merely running away from the challenge. There is also a certain degree of “holier-than-thou” that is distasteful but tolerable. But here is a man who I felt, by his background and experiences, has something to contribute to the struggle to redeem the nation. Or perhaps not.
In the PKR elections some numbers do not tally. Some voting centres were opened late. Some JPP members (I guess PKR election officials) wore button badges of a particular contestant.
That is what I am told in The Sun’s article. So there are election irregularities. Mind you, this is the first time PKR is having nationwide direct elections. Mind you, the running of the elections is not the responsibility of Anwar or Azmin. Mind you, unless you can be all over the country at the same time, you have to depend on other people. But, according to Zaid,
“Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and vice-president Azmin Ali must step aside as they are the source of the party’s problems.”
“Azmin should also be “disqualified” from the deputy presidential race.”
“If he (Anwar) does not see the fraud that has been going on the past two months, then I think he has also lost touch with the party.”
“The problems that have arisen today is a manifestation of Anwar’s weakness and lack of focus as a leader.”
“The fact that we can’t even organise an election shows that we are weak.”
In another report by The Malaysian Insider,
Zaid even went a step further to describe Anwar as “fledgling, weak, tottering, [and] lack of focus”, adding that the entire Pakatan Rakyat pact would “suffer if we are not careful”. He also suggested that he would be a good alternative leader in the PKR but quickly added that he would leave such a decision up to the party’s members. “I’ll be a good leader but it is up to the people, the members. You have to consult them. You cannot say that oh, I am more handsome, I am a better speaker… you have to have some consultation and then decide who to take over,” he said, smiling.
Clearly the issue is not the elections. Otherwise that would have been his focus. To brush aside requests for proof and details while claiming to have tapes and statements tells me that he is not interested in redressing the weaknesses of the elections. He is interested in maintaining the suspicion that Anwar and Azmin has been committing systematic election fraud.
The central concern of Zaid is Anwar and Azmin.
Read more at: http://www.themicahmandate.org/2010/11/what-zaid-did-instead/
