When Pakatan is too immature to govern
By The Star
EVEN before completing two full years in office, the Pakatan Rakyat government in Selangor has saddled itself with numerous inconsistencies and reversals.
The apparent initiative of some religious zealot in the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) now seeks to ban Muslims from working at entertainment outlets with liquor licences. This regressive move is almost too silly for words.
Anyone with any common sense will understand the implications of the ban and stay well clear. To be consistent and meaningful, such a ban would have to be imposed on all Subang Jaya pubs, clubs, restaurants and other establishments serving alcohol.
It would need to include outlets serving dishes laced with wine or liquor. It should also include supermarkets and other retailers selling alcoholic drinks, shops selling cosmetics containing alcohol as an ingredient, laboratories using it as a solvent and hospitals stocking it as a medical aid.
Such a ban should also apply to van and lorry drivers and aircraft pilots transporting liquor, as well as flight attendants serving drinks and customs officers handling such imports. Anything less would be inconsistent and hypocritical.
And after Subang Jaya, where else in Selangor and the other Pakatan-ruled states would not follow?
The scale of the problem Pakatan has brought on itself is beyond its own imagination.
Relevant bodies like the Malaysian Trades Union Congress are against the proposed ban, as are Muslim workers themselves. Instead of helping these workers as it pretends to do, the condition is only damaging their livelihoods.
The Selangor government is also at odds with itself over the prospect of the ban. Soon after local government chairman Ronnie Liu announced that the Government had advised MPSJ to withdraw the proposal, Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim said a fund would be set up to help the Muslim workers retrenched as a result.
The Selangor government is fragmented and disjointed. It is also allowing a creeping Islamic state in the making, with no idea whatsoever of what is involved.
If it is doing this because it senses an election coming, it is only shooting itself in both feet. Otherwise, to proceed with the ban is to shoot itself in the head.
