PAS is Trying Hard
By batsman
The recent storm in a tea cup in Kedah shows that things will not always go smoothly for the PR coalition. The last thing needed is for shallow politicians to threaten a breakup whenever small problems arise.
New forms of cooperation and new devices to ensure the PR coalition remains strong have not been developed yet. Some patience and imagination is needed for things to work themselves out. Some experiments and some new forms will also need to be tried out and adopted if successful.
PAS may look like it is stumbling and making mistakes even as the Bersih 2.0 wave motivates and gives fresh hope to hundreds of thousands of Malaysians if not millions looking for a way out of prejudice, corruption, abuse and sin. However, I believe that such stumbling may be necessary in order to find new mechanisms to strengthen the PR coalition. Wisdom, understanding and patience is needed.
PAS’s approach shows that they are trying hard and yet attentive to complaints and suggestions. The final decision of allowing legal non-Muslim non-halal establishments to operate freely but with the condition that they are not allowed to serve Muslims makes sense as a compromise. Even then, it may be that the problem may still face initial friction. These have to be ironed out whenever they appear.
I am no prophet, but I foresee situations whereby non-Muslim non-halal establishments may need to hire bouncers and install CCTV to show that they have employed due diligence in keeping Muslims out of their establishments. Such practices are already common in the west where poor patrons are kept out of high class popular night clubs and other such establishments by bouncers and CCTV. Some places even install biometrics and in the very most expensive ones, regular wealthy patrons willingly inject identity chips under their skin to facilitate entry.
This is to ensure that non-halal establishments are high class ones – not the type which break the law by illegally hiring GROs from China, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.
Hopefully non-Muslims who regularly patronize non-halal establishments will willingly inject identity chips under their skin as well if they are so obsessed with patronizing such outlets. This is for their own convenience but UMNO will be more than happy with such hi-tech modern biometric cooperation since UMNO is also obsessed about biometrics. I am not sure about PAS.
Although I make such predictions cavalierly, I hope people can see that complex problems exist in out society and shallow politicians are not equipped to solve these things. What we need are wise men and women with wisdom, good judgment and integrity. Hopefully Bapa Transformasi can succeed in transforming our politicians into such men and women. He has my gratitude and admiration if he can succeed.
It is even possible that if such compromise mechanisms work well, legal non-halal establishments may never need to serve Muslims again throughout the year and not just apply the ban during the holy month of Ramadan. After all to Muslims, they must not give in to sin at all, not just ban it from their lives during the holy month of Ramadan. Giving sin a holiday 11 months of the year and banning it for only 1 month also does not make sense.
