Work with us on this, Pak Lah!
By The Malaysian Insider
It has been close to two years since he stepped down but former prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is still in the news. Not in a good way, though.
Maligned and virtually hounded out of office, Abdullah is now seen as a key figure in getting Umno and PAS to revive their “Malay unity talks” last Christmas Eve, in the face of perceived non-Malay demands for greater say in the country.
Abdullah’s role is also being seen as an attempt to cover up rape allegations against a senior minister serving in his administration and now in the Najib government.
No one in public office has yet to speak up or out against these claims that were first raised by pro-Barisan Nasional (BN) bloggers. There has been an inelegant silence, to paraphrase Tun Musa Hitam’s description of Abdullah’s mute response to the torrent of criticisms by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad years ago.
Can the former prime minister popularly known as Pak Lah now please clear the air?
And to quote him, can he work with us on why he persists with unity talks between Umno and PAS? He tried three times in the aftermath of Election 2008 but failed due to opposition from the likes of Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat.
The popular PAS spiritual leader still talks bitterly about BN’s ill-treatment of the party in the 1970s when it helped form the ruling coalition.
Nik Aziz, who is also the Kelantan mentri besar, has vowed to ensure the Islamist party will not rejoin BN despite having cordial ties with Abdullah.
Can’t Umno leaders focus on Malaysian unity? After all, Umno presidents have been prime ministers for all Malaysians since Malaya’s independence in 1957. And they have done so, being leaders of all Malaysians and Malays, despite PAS opposing them since 1951 when a group of clerics formed the party after leaving Umno.
Fact is, Umno and PAS have been split over political philosophy for 60 years save for the few years together when BN was formed in 1974.
And there has always been a slew of Malay parties capturing different interests in the dominant demographic since before Merdeka. Most might have helped form Umno in 1946 but there are others that preferred to remain outside the fold.
More pressing is the need for Pak Lah to get over his “elegant silence” about the rape claims. A PKR politician is due to lodge a police report about the claims this morning and force investigations into the issue.
Yet, the allegations that have circulated for about a month, purportedly due to a US State Department cable leaked by whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has not been addressed at all.
