The long and short of understanding DAP’s behaviour in recent times (Part I)
Umar Mukhtar
It’s almost enough to boggle your mind. First, DAP signed a statement saying PAS was free to pursue whatever is their party ideals, while others were free to disagree. Then, when PAS Kelantan brought up amendments to an existing Hudud state bill in Kelantan, suddenly DAP freaked out, by their making out that that was something surprising and a stab in the back of Pakatan Rakyat.
Then they declared that they don’t want to be friends with the PAS President, Tok Guru Haji Hadi Awang purportedly after they found out that the Anwarinas and tens of thousands of other members were also against the Hudud Bill, hoping that this DAP’s little push will cause enough tsunami for PAS members to oust Hadi as President in the party’s coming AGM and party elections.
That failed miserably with even the Anwarinas being ushered out. PAS members went one step further, and passed without debate, an AGM resolution to cut all ties with DAP. Now it is up to the Shura Council to make a decision. That is their constitutional procedure, giving a small window to work out a compromise of sorts to save PR.
The PKR President offered to mediate but was rebuffed by DAP. Instead it went ahead to demand the resignations of PAS members in the Penang state government. Thick-skinned PAS, by default, encouraged those members to stay on, purportedly until the Shura Counsil’s decision.
Apparently in the frustration of PAS ignoring this ‘fook off!’, DAP suddenly unilaterally declared PR was no more. Effectively DAP was saying there was no more PR coalition government anywhere. So PAS have to act accordingly. Then suddenly, the next day, DAP said it will work through PKR as the middleman with any party as long as that party is also working to kick Barisan National out. Then the next day LKS was back to his ‘fook off!’ stance.
You will not be able to make the head or tail of such a stance by a group of grown men, if you were led to believe that Hadi and Hudud were the purported targets of DAP’s ire. Nothing of that sort. Hudud and Hadi are not new issues, especially when one is reminded that PR was already reconciled to PAS commitment to Hudud a long time ago.
Check the timing of events and you will see what DAP is really up to. It’s vintage LKS!
When Barisan Alternatif broke up in an initial attempt to make PAS and DAP to work together, one must note that it actually broke-up because grassroots voters of DAP just could not accept sleeping with what they perceived as a fundamentalist, extremist religion-based party. DAP’s leadership had to listen. PAS members did not give a hoot either way. It was a push factor from DAP voters.
Bear in mind that prior to the existence of PR, DAP was not a truly member-based organisation. Hence its leadership was free with their own ideas. There really did not exist an upwards feedback mechanism. The inevitable break-up of BA was an awakening. It was only with the formation of PR that membership drives were initiated. But the leadership’s ideas remain quite distinct from grassroots’ biases.
LKS has ambitions beyond state governments even though DAP’s support maxed at minority level nation-wide. That means collaborating with non-Chinese parties. DAP grassroots, however much they agreed to that, it didn’t include Hudud-loving people for reasons of not wanting to modify the character of this nation, which they believe will eventually happen if Hudud was allowed to take root.
So this dichotomy existed in DAP for quite a while until Anwar Ibrahim was surprisingly released from prison. After being spurned by UMNO leaders after his release, no matter how hard he had tried to be accepted again. Anwar planned to assert revenge by working out a 2-phase programme of forming an opposition coalition to rival BN, and the committee in PKR worked out a model, learning from the mistakes of BA. Phase 1 – electoral pact, and Phase 2 – a working formal coalition win or not.
At that time, Anwar was an UMNO man through and through. He was never really multi-racial. It was not until he attended a Dong Zong function when he had to go on stage with his wife to calligraph a Chinese character which he grimaced through, that he realised he could go through all these display of committed multi-racialism, if it means he can have his revenge and even become prime minister.
Initially, there was no formal meeting between the parties to consider either the electoral pact or the eventual coalition. Anwar preferred informal conversations and bilateral meetings with leaders where he could exude his personal charms and avoid the uneasy stuff. But credit to him, he achieved a lot considering that it was a one-man implementational effort.
PAS was ambivalent to the idea but was prompted by Anwars’s moles in PAS whose unqualified admiration of Anwar was contagious. These were the professional Malays who joined politics, PAS, soon after Anwar’s 1998 arrest, before the formation of Parti Keadilan Nasional, the forerunner of PKR.
Basically Anwar convinced PAS that he was an able guardian of Malay and Islamic interests vis-a-vis DAP. That was good enough for PAS. The relative easiness of PAS’s acceptance gave the Anwarinas a wrong message as to their own influence in the party.
The DAP leadership jumped at another chance of going national. It was convinced that the time was right and also that Anwar was up to the task, plus some bonuses that DAP’s true intentions could be realised through Anwar. These bonuses arise out of Anwar’s personal weaknesses as a leader. No, not just the sodomy thing, everybody knew that. None of Dr Mahathir self-induced paranoia of blackmails, etc.
DAP had detected that Anwar’s desire to be PM was already an obssession. That Anwar would do anything to be PM. That Anwar needed the coalition as the vehicle to go to Putrajaya more than DAP needed it. Plus his other self-indulgences, Anwar was the perfect horse to ride on. From then on, Anwar became DAP’s running dog, broker for DAP’s needs, chief apologist
LKS has hit jackpot! And that jackpot means the delivery of LKS dreams about being most influential in Malaysian politics, which he had indicated to Lee Kuan Yew when Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia in 1965. The latter promised help but alas, LKY is dead. (To be continued)
