Washing dirty linen in public
Tay Tian Yan, My Sinchew
PKR has done yet another foolish thing: to wash its dirty linen in public.
The party flipped over Khalid’s past records, and compiled a 50-page report from some of the evidences it managed to find, from the out-of-court settlement with Bank Islam to the housing projects approved by the state government.
Its objective was to tell the entire world that Khalid indeed had an integrity issue, unfit to be the menteri besar.
Sure enough a party that is so selfless as to unearth its own leader’s flaws should by right win the generous applause of the public.
But, it was done at a wrong timing in an inappropriate manner based on an ill principle.
Choosing a time when the party is all the more eager to bring down Khalid Ibrahim is anything but persuasive. Why has PKR spared Khalid when these things took place, and only voiced them out now that it wants to get rid of him?
The revelation was also done in a wrong way. Since these incidents involved money politics, they should instead have been referred to Selcat (Select Committee of Competency, Accountability and Transparency), which the state rightly takes pride in. This cross-party committee should have come more convincing than any other institutions.
Or perhaps just hand over directly to MACC.
Selcat or MACC, they both have the statutory power to launch investigation and give the opposing parties a fair chance rather than a unilateral allegation which neither needs to neither offer convincing proof nor allow the alleged to defend himself.
While unilateral allegations could be lethal, they are nevertheless unfair and morally just not right.
As for principle, PKR used to label Khalid as a clean and incorrupt MB who oversaw the state treasury with prudence and who had drawn a clear line from money politics. He was said to have offended many property developers and contractors because he was not willing to bend on the rules and many in his party were frustrated with him because he did not know how to take care of their interests.
Now that a close ally has become a foe, the most incorrupt MB is now painted as immoral and inept.
People begin to question whether Khalid is replaced because of all these money matters, or because he has to be replaced, they have to work extra hard to dig out these matters.
Of course, if we were to be a little more observant, we should be able to uncover more irregularities with the allegation.
The out-of-court settlement between Khalid and Bank Islam took place in mid-February, and the award of housing contract to Eco World was in March. The thing is, the PKR supreme council had on January 15 convened a meeting to take Khalid out, and later we had the “Kajang Plan.”
In other words, PKR had made the decision to replace Khalid well before the alleged misdeeds.
PAS was not in favour of replacing Khalid and the public also got confused, when PKR suddenly came to the realization that it had left out something important. So, it rushed through the 50-page report to justify its decision.
Whether Khalid indeed has an integrity issue is yet to be seen, but what is certain is that PKR has done itself further damage by washing its dirty linen in public.
This shouldn’t have happened to a party many used to look up to.
