The road from Kajang to Sarawak to Putrajaya – the conspiracy they are not telling you about
The Third Force
“The sky can either be red or blue, but not both.”
That was the colour Rafizi Ramli painted the podium with early this year, the 9th of January, when he laid down the law – any party in breach of the opposition coalition’s consensual framework would be sent packing.
On board the idea with him were leaders from the DAP-PKR-Amanah alliance, who convened to formally ratify a seven-point agreement under the banner of Pakatan Harapan (PH). At first glance, the perception was that DAP and PKR were sincere in taking off where Pakatan Rakyat (PR) had once failed – to put the quest for Putrajaya above everything else.
Regarded as a formidable rarity, PR had previously agreed to function as a bloc, but only in principle. The lack of formal sanction to several of its treaties, however well intentioned, led to dissension between component parties at every other juncture, leaving the coalition in shambles and the better banded Barisan Nasional (BN) with a stronger representation at the polls.
PH didn’t want a repeat of that mistake, and as DAP organising secretary Anthony Joke – pardon me, Anthony Loke – had put it, PH would field but one candidate at any given constituency during polls. Looking at Sarawak, we can see how that worked out, not to mention how there was never any talk of booting PKR or DAP from the coalition for failing to keep within the parenthesis of their agreement.
Notwithstanding Sarawak, Rafizi’s January caveat played a lot like classic prep talk being delivered to new recruits of an organization, and that’s not too far off – anyone well acquainted with the intricacies of opposition politics would immediately have sensed that caution was being drawn by Rafizi towards Amanah, a self-acclaimed progressive Islamist faction that was and is as yet being funded by DAP.
But it would require an insider with tentacles creeping through the kitchen doors – and not just any kitchen, but those that allowed entry only to a certain trio, one of them being Tian Chua – to know that Rafizi was actually directing caution at none other than Lim Kit Siang, the very person he leaves the public feeling he would go to bat for.
And believe me, at some point people just talk – and the one who spilled the beans on Kit Siang is a mole I planted in DAP some eight years back, who has since left the party and is linked to both Kit Siang and a certain Penang state EXCO member. Of course, this ‘ghost’ is the person Kit Siang would least have expected to tell on him, and the senior Lim may now convene a witch hunt to identify who this person is. But all I have to say to Kit Siang is this – good luck with that.
On with the story – the inaugural leaders’ summit in Shah Alam marked the first time PKR and DAP shared a podium on the commonality of rational purpose, recognising the flipside to what was once their tag-phrase – agreeing to disagree. That motto precipitated a crisis two years ago when Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim contrived a plot to topple Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim from the post of Selangor Menteri Besar (MB).
Anwar had his reasons for wanting to topple Khalid, and I’ve explicitly stated them back when I wrote as ‘Raggie Jessy’. I’ll dabble on that yet again soon enough, but for now, let us just say that the then PKR de facto leader saw Khalid to be a handicap he needed to overcome in a greater quest to topple Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Tun Razak by the year 2015.
The only problem with that plan was that it existed. The driving perception to this day is that the father and son tag team, Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng, was unaware of the manoeuvre and were arm twisted into joining the fray. But what you’re about to read tells of a conspiracy different from the one you’ve probably been made accustomed to since Kajang.
Unbeknown to the broader Rafizi-Wan Azizah camp, Anwar and Kit Siang had discussed Selangor late in 2012, agreeing that the road to Putrajaya was bedevilled by Khalid’s popularity in the state. The duo pandered to throw Khalid’s credentials into the dumps should the Selangor MB retain his position following the general election, which was then anticipated to be around the corner.
But the idea of tarnishing Khalid’s reputation before polls was risky business, given the likelihood of a voter backlash – there was just no telling when the general election would be held, and that gave the opposition little time to launch a successful smear campaign against the Selangor MB.
With that in foresight, both Anwar and Kit Siang were said to have contemplated the problem from all angles, searching for means to stymie Khalid’s chances at the poll without having to launch an all-out offensive against him.
Now, the constituency of Ijok in Selangor was akin to a voter repository for Khalid, meaning, constituents there regarded him to be something of an icon. Put differently, he was the Ijok insider, and its voters were his fixed deposit. Anwar realised that he needed to break the synergy, which is when Kit Siang came up with the idea of getting Khalid to contest in Port Klang.
Yes, it was Kit Siang – not Anwar, not Rafizi, but Lim Kit Siang. As the story goes, deliberations between Anwar and the senior Lim ended with the agreement that Khalid would contest Port Klang and would only be notified at the eleventh hour of the decision.
I’m really not sure what the claim is now, if Rafizi is being credited (or discredited) for the Port Klang manoeuvre, or if he did in fact moot the idea. It would be a hell of a coincidence if he did, for the idea was undoubtedly something Kit Siang had deliberated with Anwar behind Rafizi’s back, and for a reason – in the event Khalid had lost, the senior Lim planned to field a DAP candidate in Port Klang come the 14th general election.
By October in 2012 or some time thereabouts, a few of Anwar’s trusted affiliates and lawyers had marked on the calendar a definite conviction ahead, telling Anwar that the prosecution’s petition of appeal to have him convicted for sodomy would toll the death knell to his political career.
The long and short of it is this – by October 2012, Anwar already knew he stood a cat in hell’s chance of becoming the next Selangor MB.
Interesting, isn’t it? While I don’t like to leave stories hanging, I really need to pen off now, and will be back to tell you how Anwar hoodwinked his own wife and how all this relates to Sarawak.
To be continued…
