What Happens Now to the Opposition and Change?

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On May 18, 2013

Many young people are now charged up to do something to bring about change. Some of them have even expressed willingness to help in ways like educating others about pressing issues and going into the rural hinterland. Pakatan should harness their energies, their eagerness.

Kee Thuan Chye

Now that the 13th general election (GE13) is over and Najib Razak has been sworn in as prime minister and his Cabinet has been formed, what happens to the Opposition Pakatan Rakyat and the massive numbers of people who wanted change, as reflected in the popular vote?

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has done the right thing in not accepting the result of GE13 on grounds of fraud, and he has been going around rallying support for his cause, but where this will lead is highly uncertain.

Meanwhile, PKR strategist Rafizi Ramli has announced that Pakatan is investigating the results of 27 parliament seats which were won by the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) narrowly. If he and his team are able to prove fraud or wrong tabulation of the votes, there might be a case made for them. But where? In the courts? Would they get the justice they seek?

The harsh reality is, the system we have now and the rules made for it are heavily in favour of BN. Since the time when Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister, many rules were changed to favour the incumbent government – including controlling the judiciary, the Attorney-General’s chambers, the media, the police, the higher echelons of the civil service, Felda, the universities and numerous other institutions – and they cannot be unchanged unless the present government is overthrown.

And to overthrow it is extremely difficult, as we have seen from the GE13 result. The fact that Pakatan garnered three per cent more of the popular vote and still lost the elections, and the fact that it managed to win only 89 seats from this while BN won 133 indicate clearly that gerrymandering has favoured BN beyond decent proportions.

If this continues to GE14, the Opposition may still not win at that one. Besides, in the interim, it may be further disadvantaged by an expected fresh exercise to redelineate the electoral constituencies. We can be sure it will be conducted to further benefit the incumbent. So, realistically speaking, Pakatan cannot possibly beat BN playing by the latter’s rules.

As it looks, nothing short of a revolution can bring BN down. But that would not be the way preferred by most Malaysians, especially the middle-ground ones who want peace and stability. And given that we have not reached our economic limits, there may not be enough impoverished people with little to lose to support such a drastic move.