Is ‘stubborn‘ DAP making a scapegoat of Hadi Awang?
Hazlan Zakaria, The Ant Daily
In what can only be termed as pre-emptive, hypocritical and detrimental to Pakatan unity, DAP has unilaterally declared its own shadow cabinet lineup on May 19, after accusing PAS President Abdul Hadi Awang of being uncooperative with the opposition pact leadership.
The party announced that 34 of its parliamentarians has been divided to shadow 18 ministerial portfolios, with one MP as lead in every portfolio with several deputies each.
DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng has named Hadi as the major stumbling block to forming a true Pakatan shadow cabinet and indeed the one hobbling the pact’s consensus by keeping his own counsel diverging from previously agreed decisions.
He reportedly said that there can be no consensus among the parties and as such there can be no concerted effort at shadowing the BN cabinet but for each party to do so separately on their own.
The socialist democratic party’s decision seems like it was made without consulting with Opposition Leader Wan Aziziah Wan Ismail who had on May 18 declared that ensuring that Pakatan jointly shadows the BN cabinet was one of her major commitments.
While Lim did say that Wan Azizah was informed about the matter, it was clearly after the fact.
What is also clear is that Lim’s move is akin to torpedoing the Opposition Leader’s ship before it can even leave the harbour.
For by coming up with his own shadow cabinet list, he seems to be throwing away any possible vestige of Pakatan’s viability as a pact out the window.
And at a time Pakatan is on the verge of imploding, now is not the time for DAP to play the fool and make matters worse striking out with its own shadow cabinet and prolonging its feud with Hadi in the open.
He is also jumping the gun by coming out with a party decision that seems to override Pakatan on the issue.
What seems to be the case is that the DAP chief had not sat down with the other opposition parties at all on the matter insisting that it was moot since Hadi won’t come to the table.
And despite accusing Hadi of it, it is DAP that is acting unilaterally and without consultation with Pakatan or seeking consensus.
Is DAP then making a scapegoat of PAS to mask their own stubbornness in leaping to act just like they are accusing Hadi of doing?
While initially reported by some portals as seeking to form a shadow cabinet, Wan Azizah has clarified that what she sought was the reconstitution of the previous Pakatan shadow committees to follow each ministry.
Each committee will be made of a team with one MP from each Pakatan party mirroring a previous opposition compromise after failing to come up with a shadow cabinet.
Even then when relations between the opposition pact’s parties were cordial they were unable to agree on single MPs to shadow each ministry, as they cannot find agreement on how to divide the portfolios.
Wan Azizah then went on to blame the powers that be as the real reason behind the lack of a functioning shadow cabinet pointing to the lack of parliament funding for such a setup, not acknowledging the fact perhaps that there is no shadow cabinet to fund in any case.
While one can understand her complaint on the BN-led executive’s stranglehold over the legislative arm of government, the failure in coming up with a single shadow cabinet is purely Pakatan’s at the moment and parliament funding is not yet as issue.
PAS has responded to Lim’s allegations of an uncooperative Hadi with admonishment for the DAP chief to stop his personal attacks against their president and reminded him that there is already a Pakatan meeting with all party whips on the issue of the shadow cabinet.
“The parliamentary whip of DAP, PKR and PAS met with Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah and managed to reach a consensus that the PR shadow cabinet issue does not arise as priority on the institutional reform process of the Parliament,” PAS veep Mahfuz Omar was quoted as saying by Astro Awani in an article on its website.
As reported, Mahfuz asked Lim to refer to the DAP parliamentary whip Loke Siew Fook on the shadow cabinet before he “busies himself attacking other people.”
Rightly enough, instead of continuing the very public feud against Hadi and stirring the pot of what is already a virtual storm in the Pakatan teacup, DAP should focus on working within the Pakatan framework, whatever of it that remains still.
Though PAS too has reportedly divvying up its MPs into ministerial portfolios, though it is not clear if this is part of the shadow cabinet committee proposed by Wan Azizah or the Islamist party’s own shadow cabinet.
Whatever the case, both DAP and PAS should perhaps work within the ambit of Wan Azizah’s proposal and not strike out on their own.
Powerless or not, funded by Parliament or not, it would still be a unified Pakatan effort instead of precursors to a splintering Pakatan that we are seeing now.
