Time for Wan Azizah to bring it on

By admin-s Last updated Aug 28, 2014

If my party president wants to assume the leadership, then she has to ride her mandate and not just sit in the carriage waiting to reach her destination.

Praba Ganesan, Malay Mail Online

Never a day passes presently without someone asking me about Selangor. It does fluster when these instances are numerous and further my quizzers might want to factor that I am not privy to the internal dramas unfolding in all the power corridors, whether in Shah Alam, Tropicana or Raja Laut. They are welcome to my political expositions, but they won’t — to their disappointment — get juicy rumours.

But what really wears me down is having to bear the unending diatribes by every politician of every hue on my side, and not having PKR President Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail dominate the articulation of both Pakatan Rakyat and her party, in these trying days.

She is after all the presumptive nominee to replace Khalid Ibrahim as mentri besar of my state.

It is time for Wan Azizah — not others — to show up and lead those who back her to administer the Seladang State.

This one is about Wawi

Wan Azizah, or often used acronym Wawi, is the contention of this column today.

This is not about her being possibly the first female chief minister in the country or if the Kajang Move — the overly elaborate deliberation of why Anwar Ibrahim should have contested for the Satay Town only to have his wife replace him, leaving it in hindsight as a manoeuvre which is increasingly a middling curiosity — was justified or if Khalid Ibrahim should have been targeted for removal.

Readers are entitled to their view of those elements. This is about what must be done by Wan Azizah if she is to triumph in this persistent quagmire.

It is obvious but I’ll state it anyhow: If my party president wants to assume the leadership of the richest and most strategic state in the country, where almost a quarter of our population reside, then she has to ride her mandate and not just sit in the carriage waiting to reach her destination.

Everything is bigger in Selangor

The importance of Selangor cannot be overstated. I just want to remind Pakatan what is at stake here, because some of our partners appear to undermine the potential.

In the past 20 years in particular, leaders have leveraged on holding the epicentres of their nations to usher them to the top.

For the centre is louder and noisier. If it can materialise there, the rest of the country feels emboldened.

Former French president Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) was mayor of Paris for 18 years before that and South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) held the capital of country, Seoul, before that.

Sections of Pakatan would be endeared to learn from poster boy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the former mayor of Istanbul.

In the same vein, being the governors of major states did not dampen the rise of Californian Ronald Reagan or Texan George W Bush.

Controlling the centre matters plenty, and the road to Putrajaya can never possibly — literally — bypass Selangor.

The Selangor situation is as such.

What’s the impasse now?

Khalid is starting to slip away from the power debate.

Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah has asked from Pakatan parties, names. Not one only from each of them, mind you.

PAS in a week has said it is unequivocal in its support for Wan Azizah, and then turned around to say it will accept the Sultan’s request for names and won’t participate in a full Pakatan single submission of Wawi. In short PAS has said enough to please any side, and may opt out of deciding and pass their democratic mandate over to the Sultan. This has not affected the two assemblymen.

But this is what really matters.

Wan Azizah is the nominee of her party, DAP and two PAS reps — Sa’ari Sungib (Hulu Kelang) and Hasnul Baharuddin (Morib). Including her, there are 30 assemblymen. Any which way to count, they have a name which has the confidence of the state legislative assembly, from which the power of the executive emerges from. There can only be 26 reps who hold their allegiance to another candidate.

The Sultan can only appoint who has the majority from the 56 seats. There exists presently no possible permutation to argue against respecting the majority without attacking the democratic basis of the state of Selangor.

Selangor needs a winner

Which begs the question, why the delay? It is connected to my own requirement for the job, that the designated mentri besar must want the job badly. He or she has to force the issue.

So that the new guy is confident enough not to exclude assemblymen and civil servants from playing their roles. Dares to canvass ideas to move a progressive Selangor forward. Strong on issues but not arrogant. Kind to those served without looking weak. Knows always, without fail, that the state is always bigger than him.

This will not end well by waiting, and the last person to wait right now is Wan Azizah.