Sorry Hadi, I beg to differ

By admin-s On Jan 26, 2015

PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang is duly concerned that local government election would cause instability. In his view, Chinese councillors would take over in certain big cities if elections were held.

Mohamed Hanipa Maidin, PAS MP for Sepang

Is it true that local government election would lead to instability or May 13? I seriously doubt such a strange proposition, no matter who made that statement.

After all, local government elections were held before Barisan Nasional unjustifiably abolished them.

In fact, those elections predated May 13. Thus, relying on such an unfortunate event to flatly reject such elections is indeed mind boggling, to say the least.

Globally, local election is a universal phenomenon especially in developed countries as well as Muslim countries.

In fact, in the US, where federalism is widely practised, almost all public officers’ are elected. Thus, we see the district attorney and the states’ judges in America have been electorally appointed until now.

In the Muslim world, local government elections are not new. Former Iranian and Turkish prime ministers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan were once elected as mayors of Tehran and Istanbul respectively.

Indonesia’s Joko Widodo was a mayor who was elected before he assumed his presidency.

The Indonesian parliament received fierce criticism when it voted for the abolishment of direct elections for the mayor and governor in 2014.

The law was backed by the coalition behind the then presidential candidate, Probowo Subianto.

It is interesting to note that the proponents of such laws never cited the issue of instability as their justification to scrap the process.

On the other hand, hefty costs and corruption were the main reasons for such a move.

Accountability and transparency

Islamists should not be unduly worried about the term “election”, and as it is not a dirty word. On the contrary, local government elections imply accountability and transparency in the public office.

Those two criteria are the hallmarks of good governance. Local election is an efficient mechanism to promote those ideals.

Local election, in his view, could lead to instability and ultimately a bloody tragedy such as May 13. And if such a tragedy takes place in future, the real culprit would be local government election.

With due respect, the PAS president’s view is unfortunately misplaced. It presupposes that all big cities in this country are dominated by a single ethnic group, namely the Chinese.

He presumes that the Malays would not be duly represented in Chinese-dominated urban areas.

Using his logic, the Chinese would be equally unproportionately represented in Malay belt states in the event local government election is revived.

As long as Malaysians elect any Malaysian in any local government election, we should not be unduly worry. Let such unwarranted fear be reserved to Perkasa, Isma or Utusan.

If Chinese were not worried to elect PAS candidates in the last general election, why would Malays be worried if they are represented by Chinese, Indian or Malay councillors?