Pakatan’s Khalid conundrum

Kit Siang’s statement on Monday that all Pakatan parties must clarify the stand of all its assembly representatives also raises doubts over the confidence of the coalition’s leaders.

M. Veera Pandiyan, The Star

Instead of throwing in the towel, the Selangor MB has decided to dig in his heels and take on his former allies.

THE double-sided tape is an amazing invention which is more than 70 years old. The pressure-sensitive strip, coated with adhesives on both sides, is designed to stick two different surfaces together.

Virtually hidden after being applied, it gives a neat impression for the product of the bonded parts.

The brilliant innovation is an economical alternative for glue to attach or mount things, but it has at least two common drawbacks.

It can stick stubbornly when you want to remove it or comes undone when least expected.

Like the tape, PKR, the party now embroiled in an ugly leadership tussle for Selangor, has been keeping DAP and PAS in place in the Pakatan Rakyat coalition since 2008, in spite of their clearly disparate ideological differences.

The pact’s de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is the main adhesive on one side while the other sticky part is the mutual hate that the parties have for the ruling Barisan Nasional, especially its linchpin Umno.

Is the tape still strong enough to hold them together?

We should be able to know by Saturday, when PAS holds its twice postponed meeting to take a stand on the Selangor Mentri Besar crisis.

The very future of Pakatan appears to be hinged on the meeting to determine whether PAS stands by its Syura Council’s decision to support Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim as MB or goes along with PKR and DAP to ditch him and accept Anwar’s wife Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Ismail as the replacement.

As admitted by DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang, Pakatan is facing its worst crisis since its formation. It is also one of its own doing, or of PKR’s, through its now infamous “Kajang Move”.

It started in January when PKR was in the midst of a bitter feud between Khalid and deputy president Mohd Azmin Ali.

Kajang assemblyman Lee Chin Cheh resigned abruptly, in what appeared to be making way for Anwar to contest the seat and become MB, although the man himself shied away from admitting this.

PKR strategic director Rafizi Ramli claimed it was part of a “game changer” plan to capture Putrajaya and counter Umno’s designs to retake Selangor.

Those who flocked to Anwar’s nightly ceramahs in Kajang hoped to find out the rationale but none were given except for the hazy “fortify Selangor as the gateway to Putrajaya”.

But his campaign came to a swift end when the Court of Appeal found him guilty of sodomy and sentenced him to five years’ jail.

PKR picked his wife as the replacement and she eventually won the by-election by beating Barisan’s Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun by a reduced majority.

Since then, the focus of PKR’s leadership has all been about removing Khalid and installing Wan Azizah.

The once much-admired corporate captain, credited with increasing the coffers of the country’s richest state after his first term in office, is now treated as dirt by his party for refusing to step down.

Anwar has now admitted that the reason for the Kajang Move was to replace Khalid and that the MB was told Wan Azizah would take his place.

It seems that from day one, PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang has not been happy with this, a position shared by the ulama in the party.

Questions are also being asked if Pakatan’s “common policy principles and framework” include the practice of nepotism.

In the wake of mud-slinging against PKR’s 40-page dossier and the indecent haste to expel him from the party, some PAS leaders have compared Khalid’s case to the sacking of Anwar from Umno in 1999, noting that he too did not quit.

If it is really about good governance and democracy, shouldn’t it be easier to throw out Khalid through a no-confidence motion in the assembly?

But based on Rafizi’s recent revelation that PAS did not want Anwar to be Prime Minister but preferred Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah instead, PKR cannot be certain about the support from the party’s representatives in the state assembly.

DAP’s Selangor Exco member Datuk Teng Chang Khim, has for example, openly defended Khalid and denied that he made decisions on his own.

Kit Siang’s statement on Monday that all Pakatan parties must clarify the stand of all its assembly representatives also raises doubts over the confidence of the coalition’s leaders.

What started out as the “Kajang Move” has now turned into the “Khalid Conundrum”. He is proving to be too tough a nut to crack.

Instead of throwing in the towel, the MB has thrown the gauntlet at those who are out to get him.

His position may look untenable in the long run but he seems to have dodged or fended off every move against him and remains as defiant as ever.

He has even used the purported dirt dossier against him to his advantage.

The MACC is investigating a report which Khalid’s private secretary Mohamad Yasid Bidin lodged over the allegations, after telling the media that the MB’s accusers had failed to do so.

Khalid has also sent a legal notice to PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution to withdraw the allegations and apologise publicly or face a legal suit.

More significantly, he has also won the endorsement to stay on from Selangor ruler Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah until the next assembly sitting in November – when the state budget is scheduled to be tabled.

Under Selangor’s laws, only the MB can get approval from the Sultan to convene a special sitting for any motion of no-confidence, so that prevents others from doing so.

Khalid, who can run the state with just four Exco members, has now sacked all the DAP and PKR Exco members, effectively causing the collapse of the Pakatan state government.

It is certainly a huge constitutional crisis and one that is set to grow worse.

For now, PKR and DAP leaders can only hope that PAS comes back to the Pakatan fold after its meeting on Saturday.

> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan like this observation by Plato: The measure of a man is what he does with power.