Good-bye Pakatan Rakyat – the coalition that never was

Umar Mukhtar

For all the steaming hatred towards the ruling party, followed by the passionate overthrow of five state governments, the consequent political platform, Pakatan Rakyat, died a few days ago without so much as a whimper. The epitaph should simply read, “Here lies a coalition that never was”.

With its enabling founder in prison, watching in the sidelines through the occasional peeps from the hospital bed, the demise was presided over by personalities quite blur as to the real intentions of PR.

PR was not formed to just defeat BN in elections. In fact, there was already one front for that purpose – an electoral pact that minimised split votes. The first time round in PRU12 in 2008, it was not PR that delivered the heavy blow, it was the electoral pact comprising of the PR parties, that allowed for one-to-one electoral contests. That consensus facilititated all BN-haters to unite against BN in the electins. But success had its problems. Who to govern the conquered states?

A proposed coalition was born to rule Selangor, Penang, Kedah and Perak. In fact, one of the reason that the electoral pact was successful was because in the distribution of seats among the BN-hating parties. It was designed such that no one party, except for Kelantan which was already PAS, could form a new state government by itself.

The decision to form a coalition was not simply one of those sweet-nothings normally whispered by Anwar Ibrahim. Work needs to be done. In PKR, the strategists began to believe that multi-racialism, which was the backbone of PKR, is achievable. They even begin to believe that they won seats because the voters wanted that more than manifesting their hatred for BN.

So if Chinese and Indians and Islamists are already supporting PKR, just simply extend that to welcome more Chinese and Indians and Islamists by co-opting DAP and PAS. Some idiots in PKR were already quietly thinking of the new entity as the larger future PKR. Little did they know that DAP and PAS were also thinking of the larger entity going to be in their respective images. That was the unspoken uderlying hope that was the foundation of PKR. Insincerity.

A schedule was prepared to work towards a formal working coalition. It was in the aftermath of the unexpectedly smooth compromises in forming the state governments. It was also in the euphoria of unexpected victory. After only a few months, Anwar slipped into his BN power-trip behaviour and was reported for sodomy. Only Anwar was aware of the incarceration that will bring. Things were never the same again after that.

Instead of following the prepared schedule for hard negotiations to formalise a coalition, Anwar knew that it was only his immediate ascension to PM will save his ass. Hence the comedic “September 16” debacle. Meetings of the PR Presidential Council after that were no longer serious sessions but three-quarters of the time available were spent on the only matter that they all agree 100% – bitching about BN’s latest boo-boo.

The agendas set for meetings were glossed over. By that time, the PR leaders were conscious that the chasms of political and philosophical differences between them all were insurmountable. Believe it or not, their only hope was Anwar’s continuing bull-shitting that bridged them from crisis to the next crisis.

Meanwhile, PR lost Perak, which could have been defended, if all parties fully-declared and pool their resources. Everybody was paddling their own canoes. The power-grab by BN was remarkable in its ease of success more than its betrayal of written democratic recipes. Licking wounds attracted its share of frustrated sympathisers though.

By the time PRU13 came in 2013, PR did better as was expected, in spite of itself. If not for the Malays in the Malay heartland of Kedah sounding the alarm, and PR’s forays into Sabah and Sarawak being no more than exploiting the latent racism there, PR came close to capturing Putrajaya,

In spite of the late Karpal Singh extending his dog and pony show in the delayed Anwar trial, Anwar was sentenced to incarceration which spelt the end of his active political career. By then, the Kajang Move had happened. In its aftermath, the influence-peddling by PR leaders was a prelude to a comical war of semantics to define whether PR was still in existence.

PR’s break-up was never because of these happenings, it was the deep-rooted enmity between them re-surfacing. The peddler of wishful-thinking was not around to sell his wares of stick-em and sugar-coated bull-shit. The beef with PAS grass-roots was that the DAP after the formation of PR was the same the old DAP, but PAS had gone on a limb to appear the team-player. Time to give the finger, and Hudud became a real issue.

DAP knew from its Barisan Alternatif days that acquiesence to Hudud was the ball-breaker with its supporters, so it had to respond accordingly. Especially after PRU14, DAP knew that its Chinese support was solid, and DAP was the only party that did not really depend on PR’s configuration to win seats, unlike PKR and to some extent, PAS. It needs PR post-PRU more than during the PRU.

DAP is not prepared to risk ts localised demographic majority to consolidate its national ambitions where the Chinese are in the minority, unless it can be the ultimate decision-maker. Hence, its intention to sponsor a new coalition of weaklings. It won’t go anywhere because of exactly that, a coalition of weaklings.

So PR is dead because issues of coalition were never settled. It’s back to pure racial politics now unless the majority race is split by religious issues. DAP is watching middle-east events with great interest, hoping that the differences between Muslims will spillover to Malaysian politics. The eye of the opportunist will never leave DAP as long as Lim Kit Siang is around.

The irony is, if elections are held tomorrow, the anti-BN forces should theoretically win hands down. BN is tripping over each other to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. But Malaysians know now that the opposition cannot handle success. What would Putrajaya be like after opposition victory, if Shah Alam is presently a circus of pretenders. So BN will win in spite of itself, and Malaysians will go through another five years of stunted growth in nation-building.

Everything being equal, Anwar will come out of prison after PRU14. Too old and sickly to revive the kamikaze PR with PKR Baru or whatever.

So RIP, PR – R.I.P., Rest In Prison, Anwar.