Why hurt DAP by fighting in public?
Last week, the disciplinary committee cleared Ramasamy of the charge, but Karpal was not happy. He called a press conference and declared the committee members unfit for the job. He said they should have stepped down and let a different panel judge the matter because Ramasamy is also a disciplinary committee member and therefore their colleague and peer.
The internal bickering within the DAP between its national chairman, Karpal Singh, and its deputy secretary-general, P Ramasamy, must stop.
If it can’t stop, at least don’t bring it out in the open.
It’s really nobody else’s business that these two have been at each other’s throats since Ramasamy named three candidates for the upcoming general election and Karpal complained that he didn’t have the right to do that.
Karpal rubbed it in by saying that the party had no place for warlords, prompting Ramasamy to retort that the party could do without godfathers. These personal swipes have done nothing but exacerbated the spat and made it look like a clash of egos.
Things came to a head when 150 people held a demonstration to protest against Karpal during the party’s state convention last December. It led to complaints being made to the disciplinary committee, and Ramasamy was charged with orchestrating the protest.
Last week, the disciplinary committee cleared Ramasamy of the charge, but Karpal was not happy. He called a press conference and declared the committee members unfit for the job. He said they should have stepped down and let a different panel judge the matter because Ramasamy is also a disciplinary committee member and therefore their colleague and peer.
True, but Ramasamy recused himself from hearing his own case so why should it be a bone of contention? And if Karpal had no trust in the people in the committee to do this job, why did he not speak up before the hearing started? Why raise it only after the decision has been made?
Worse, why did Karpal call a press conference to slam the panel and its decision when it is clearly a party matter? If he wasn’t happy, why couldn’t he have brought it up with the party instead of throwing a tantrum in public?
He says the issue is of public interest, ostensibly because it reflects “blatant abuse of power”, but even if this were so, it concerns only the DAP. How does it affect the public? And as such, how can it be of public interest?
As I said earlier, it really is nobody else’s business because it’s a party matter. It should therefore stay within the party. There is no need to call for press conferences to sling mud at one’s own party. That is something you don’t see happening with the Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders.
It’s surprising that a veteran politician like Karpal does not seem aware of the damage it can cause his own party by behaving this way. Perhaps, because of his great many years in politics, he has become too set in his thinking and in his ways.
He might do well to learn some statesmanship from the party’s secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, who seldom brings party issues out into the public sphere unless there has been party consensus to do so.
Sure enough, Lim himself has come out to call for this particular issue to be settled internally. “It should not be publicized (until it is first discussed internally),” he has advised, wisely.
Karpal has served the party admirably for decades and he is rightly recognized as the voice of integrity and conscience, but he must also realize that the DAP does not need bad press that can tarnish its image, especially when the general election is expected soon.
Behaving as he does now, he is presenting fodder on a platter for the mainstream media to run down the DAP. Now the Government-controlled and Government-owned media are splashing it all over town that the DAP is suffering from internal strife, and the message behind this is that the Opposition is not reliable and therefore not worthy of the people’s support.
On March 19, The Star ran Karpal’s tantrum as its front page lead accompanied by a blown-up picture of him. This is attracting unwanted attention.
To be sure, The Star was practicing flawed journalism by making that story its front page lead because there were other stories that day that merited more attention. And certainly, blowing up Karpal’s picture was also flawed journalism because good newspapers would put their best picture of the day on their front page, not a huge one of someone who was merely associated with the story.
But then The Star did what it did to spin propaganda – in order to please its political masters by making the Opposition party look bad. It has been doing this at a feverish rate in the past few months because the general election is near, and also because it has to atone for its recent faux pas of running that controversial picture of the singer Erykah Badu with ‘Allah’ tattooed on her upper chest.
Karpal should therefore not play into the hands of the mainstream media. Too often in the recent past, Pakatan Rakyat has been doing that by quarrelling among themselves and airing their grouses in public, only to their own detriment.
The most recent example is the fallout between the Kedah Menteri Besar and two of his state exco members, both from his own party, PAS.
Before that, it was Karpal (again) arguing with coalition partner PAS over the issues of hudud and the Islamic state; Hasan Ali, when he was still a Selangor state exco member, brazenly defying his own colleagues in government; Zaid Ibrahim, when he was still with PKR, issuing statements that severely hurt the party, especially about the way it conducted its party elections; DAP’s M Kulasegaran challenging his party colleague Nga Kor Ming to “clear the air” over allegations of nepotism against the latter; supporters of Selangor state exco member Ronnie Liu calling on State Speaker Teng Chang Khim to resign… and so on.
Already, the public perception of Pakatan is largely sceptical. Many often ask if the coalition can govern if it should take over Putrajaya. Without its own mass media to persuade people that it can – at least based on its performance in Penang and Selangor – Pakatan cannot afford to reinforce such skepticism by doing anything negative.
Its hardcore supporters and those who have already decided to vote for Pakatan may not be fazed by developments like the Karpal-Ramasamy spat, but fence-sitters and those who have been brainwashed by Government propaganda will be influenced against it. When they go to the polls, they will remember the ugly words and deeds of the quarrelling factions, and the message drummed into them by the mainstream media.
So why would Pakatan want to take the risk of losing votes? Isn’t it better to resolve issues internally, and focus on the larger cause? As it is, the road to Putrajaya is paved with thorns. There is surely no need to take off shoes and suffer pain.
