Operation pointing fingers and looking for scapegoat

PKR called for an emergency meeting on Saturday night after the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-election results were announced so that they could plan their statements for the following morning to explain the disaster the opposition suffered in the by-elections. This is what (I suspect) transpired in that meeting.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Okay, I now call the meeting to order.

Tonight’s meeting is to discuss who to point fingers at and to look for a scapegoat for Pakatan Harapan’s disastrous performance in today’s Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections. We need to come out with a good story as to not only why we lost but why we lost so badly on top of that. So we need to point fingers at someone and look for a scapegoat to blame.

No, I don’t think we can use that 40,000 Bangladeshi phantom voters story again. I mean only about 60,000 people came out to vote in both places so surely 40,000 Bangladeshis would have been very visible amongst 60,000 voters.

Anyway, it does not make sense to catch hold of one very terrified Bangladeshi and force him to sing Negaraku when the Chinese fella who is threatening that Bangladeshi himself cannot sing Negaraku even if his life depended on it.

Can you imagine a Chinaman shouting at the Bangladeshi, “Lu nanyi Negalakoo”, and he can’t even pronounce Negaraku properly? That was shameful.

I doubt ‘the lights went out when the votes were being counted’ excuse can work again as well. It did not work the last time either because no lights went out. Even DAP denied that the lights went out.

Well, yes, we could probably say that some voters who had already died were still on the electoral roll and someone else voted in their place. But how many voters are we talking about and do we have the details? If not that would not explain the larger majority that Barisan Nasional won.

Okay, simmer down and let’s focus. Arguing amongst ourselves is not going to achieve anything. We can probably use Nga Kor Ming of DAP Perak’s excuse that PAS kacau daun and caused the opposition votes to be split. But then the share in percentage of popular votes that both PAS and PAN won combined is still less than in 2013. So we must very carefully avoid talking about that.

Another thing is Nga Kor Ming accused PAS of disturbing PAN’s seat. But then that seat has always been a PAS seat and PAS did announce their candidate first, while PAN announced theirs many days later. So technically it was PAN and not PAS that kacau daun. We need to be very careful about that point and not comment about it even if the press asks about that.

Alright, and another thing, it is clear now that PAN cannot go head-to-head with PAS and win. At best it will be 50:50 even if it is a straight fight. And it is never going to be a straight fight, because everywhere that PAS and PAN face-off, Umno will also be contesting. So expect three-corner fights every time both PAS and PAN contest against each other in any seat.

And that means we need PAS to join Pakatan Harapan. But we must not openly say we want PAS to join Pakatan Harapan. We need to say we want PAS to return to Pakatan Harapan, as if PAS was once in Pakatan Harapan even though PAS was never in Pakatan Harapan but was just in Pakatan Rakyat.

It will be a serious loss of face for DAP if we say that we want PAS to join Pakatan Harapan after closing down Pakatan Rakyat so that PAS can be kicked out. We need to help DAP save some face because you knowlah these Chinese. It is always about saving face, which actually means it is all about ego.

So the standard script would be, ‘to ensure that Barisan Nasional can be defeated in the next general election, we must ensure that we see only straight fights. Hence we invite PAS to come back and rejoin Pakatan Harapan’. That way it does not sound like DAP has spit and is now licking back its own spit.

And at all costs Hudud or the Syariah Amendment Bill must never be mentioned. If someone asks, we just main bodoh and say we do not have any information on that, or this is just Umno’s political game, or we do not want to use religion to gain political mileage, or some excuse like that. We cannot be seen to be opposing Islam. But then we cannot be seen to be supporting Islam either. So we just ignore the whole issue and say nothing. That would be safer.

Actually Mahathir did more damage than help. But we cannot say that. Let Mahathir do all the talking. No need for us to tokok tambah anything. We can, of course, make Mahathir the scapegoat to explain the by-election disaster. But then it will make us look stupid. We were already warned but we ignored those warnings. So better we just keep quiet.

Maybe we can ask Rafizi Ramli to come out and whack the voters. Rafizi can say that the voters have no principles and only think of money and development. Actually that is what the majority of the voters all over the world do as well. But Rafizi can make it look like this is something wrong. After all he is good at creating something out of nothing so we can give him this task. In other words, we will blame the voters for today’s disaster and that is that. No need any other explanation.