Is unity an exercise in futility for top PKR trio?
What compounds the misfortunes of PKR today is that Wan Azizah continues to divide and rule opposing factions within the coalition rather than be a force for unification
Hussein Hamid, Berita Daily
Unlike PAS where dissent within its rank has gone beyond hope of any reconciliation, dissent within PKR ferments but has yet to irrevocably split asunder what Anwar Ibrahim has put together. But is it not ironic that Anwar Ibrahim, who could put together so adroitly the coalition of the unwilling (that included DAP and PAS!), chose to divide and rule within his PKR?
Predictably, this is also a trait that, to her own detriment, Wan Azizah has now made her own as president of PKR.
What is true today within PKR is that its ‘First Family’ whose patriarch is currently incarcerated in Sungai Buloh can no longer do as they wish with impunity. Not after Kajang, not after the Selangor MB debacle and certainly not after its patriarch’s ill-advised dalliances with Saiful that has resulted in his incarceration.
You can fault Najib in the manner he too, eagerly embraces gutter politics to do Anwar in, but there is no denying that Anwar himself was the architect of the circumstance that made it all possible.
What compounds the misfortunes of PKR today is that Wan Azizah continues to divide and rule opposing factions within PKR rather than be a force for its unity. Wan Azizah needs unison within PKR but instead, by her deeds encourage division. If this continues, then her position will become untenable, for surely as leader, her role is to unite not divide.
Within the Pakatan Rakyat ‘coalition’ that may or may not have met its demise recently, PAS has not honoured decisions made on their behalf by their representative Mat Sabu at various Pakatan Rakyat presidential meetings pre-2013… meetings where Hadi had absented himself.
There have also been engagements between PAS and Umno in the recent past but any attempt to second guess the nature and focus of these engagements would, at worst, be pure drivel, and at best conjectures. These engagements certainly have caused disquiet, more so in DAP than in PKR. Now whether these engagements will result in PAS joining Umno vacillates between the devil and the deep blue sea. Damm if they do and damm if they don’t.
But for now DAP, PAS and PKR are on the same side of the divide. Hence any spillover affecting any of them – such as Amanah and PAS – will need to be kept within the ‘opposition’ family if an opposition coalition is to have relevance and resonance with a public whose ‘accepted truth’ is that Pakatan Rakyat is the opposition that will face Barisan Nasional in the next election. How Pakatan Harapan will overcome that ‘truth’ would be interesting to see.
The immediate task at hand for Wan Azizah – the ‘presumed leader’ of any opposition coalition – is to put her own PKR in order by identifying the priorities she needs to deal with now rather than later.
PKR must first work at consolidating their precarious position in Selangor. It has to win more seats in Selangor and not depend on DAP or PAS to hold on to Selangor. It must govern in its own right in Selangor. To this end Azmin Ali cannot be seen by Wan Azizah as a problem in Selangor and within PKR. He is part of the solution.
Factionalism within PKR is the problem. Factionalism that has it roots in the ‘First Family’ of PKR insistence that loyalty within PKR is pledged to that family, not to PKR. Therein lies the root of PKR’s and Wan Azizah’s problem today.
