An insignificant and irrelevant hogwash

By Thomas Lee Seng Hock

The mainstream media are having a field day cashing in on the so-called party civil war in the DAP. Their spin writers have been making some remarkable fantastic comments that the the public tit-for-tat party war of words between national chairman Karpal Singh and Penang Deputy Chief Minister (II) P. Ramasamy will result in the DAP being insidiously damaged or even destroyed eventually.

The pubic feud between Karpal and Ramasamy is said to be have happened at an inopportune time when a snap general election seems imminent, and all parties are busy preparing and mobilising their leaders and members for the Battle of Putrajaya.

I think all these comments are hogwash, given the fact the the Karpal-Ramasamy spat will not have much significance in the electoral equipollent equation as the personal political fate of Ramasamy will have no impact and influence on the DAP performance in the next general election. 

Ramasamy was a virtually unknown, a political nobody, until the DAP fielded him as a candidate in the March 2008 general election and made him a deputy chief minister in Penang. It was not his personal charisma and credential that resulted in his electoral victory at the federal constituency of Batu Kawan and the state seat of Prai. It was the DAP Rocket that attracted the voters, who gave Ramasamy the victory on a golden plate.

In March 2008, the Batu Kawan parliamentary seat had 47,378, with Chinese voters comprising 56.3% of the electorate, Indians constituting 22.8%, Malays 20.5%, and voters of other racial origins 0.3%.

Ramasamy, standing under the DAP Rocket symbol, won the contest by returning 23,067 votes, beating Gerakan president and the then incumbent Chief Minister Koh Tsu Koon, who obtained 13,582 votes, giving the DAP candidate a 9,485-vote majority. There were 640 spoilt votes.

In the Prai state seat, Ramasamy, the DAP standard-bearer in the contest, sent Barisan Nasional candidate L. Krishnan of the MIC and independent candidate Ulaganathan K.A.P. Ramasamy packing, winning the 14,175-voter constitutency by polling 7,668 votes against the Barisan Nasional man’s 2,492 votes and the independent candidate’s 311 votes. Ramasamy’s majority was 5,176 votes. There were 180 spoilt votes.

The Prai state seat then had 52.9% Chinese votes, and a relatively high concentration of Indian voters, which accounted for 35.4% of the voters. The Malays constituted only 11% of the voters, with the balance 0.6% voters being people of other racial origins.

From these statistics, it could be observed that whoever the DAP had fielded in March 2008, the results in both the Batu Kawan parliamentary seat and the Prai state seat would have been the same.

Given the then prevailing wind of change blowing in the political scenario of the country, the credit and merit for the DAP victory cannot be attributed to the candidate. Anyone fielded by the party would have won hands down, given the fact that the DAP was riding high in the political tsunamic waves at that time.

Hence, Ramasamy cannot claim personal credit for the electoral victory per se. If he had contested on his own, he would have in all likelihood lose his deposits.

One spin writer has claimed that Ramasamy’s threat to quit the DAP has put the party in a fix, quoting a purported Ramasamy supporter as contending that the DAP would lose the Indian votes, without him.

The spin writer argued that Ramasamy, a parachute candidate imported into the party to stand at the last general election, is supposed to be a dynamic champion of Indian issues, highly looked up to by the Indian community, and any action on the part of the DAP to drop him as a candidate will result in massive exodus of Indians from the party.

I think the spin writer is severely miscalculating in his assessment of the Indian community, at least the core majority within it, who are fiercely loyal to the DAP over the last 50 years of the party existence.

Do not forget that the DAP has been in the forefront of fighting for the Indian community all these years, and is the main political bastion to protect and promote the rights of the community. Many of its early and current top leaders are Indians, like Devan Nair, V. David, P. Patto, Karpal Singh, Peter Dason, and that at any one time, the DAP has more Indian MPs than the MIC.

Hence, to say that the Ramasamy fiasco would seriously affect the performance of the DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat at the 13th general election is simply an illusion created by the Barisan Nasional propaganda machinery using the main stream media controlled by the ruling coalition to sow discord, create demoralisation, and promote disillusion among the DAP grassroots members, and to deceive the general voting population that all is not well in the DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat.

The Ramasamy saga will not be the only media assault on the DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat. The PAS Islamic agenda, the Hasan Ali controversy, the alleged Nga Kor Ming tailoring contract scandal, and every little negative incident involving the DAP and its Pakatan Rakyat component partners will be exeggerated, exacerbated and exploited to the fullest to make the DAP and the alternative coalition look bad in the public eyes.

However, the DAP should take comfort in the fact that the integrity and credential of its top leaders, in particular Lim Kit Siang, Karpal Singh, Lim Guan Eng, Tan Kok Wai, Fung Kui Lun, and its army of upcoming new generation of idealistic, well-educated, committed, and exemplary leaders like Teresa Kok, Chow Kon Yeow, Ronnie Liu, Tony Pua, Jenice Lee, Lim Lip Eng, Gobind Singh Deo, Jagdeep Singh, Hannah Yeoh, Teo Nie Ching, etc will ensure it performs beyond expectation, exceeding the victorious margin of the March 2008 general election.

The people’s dream and hope are in the hands of the DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat, so don’t let the Ramasamy fiasco and other minor irritants frustrate the march towards Putrajaya.