Pakatan: Peddlers of Hope
Eight years on and they are still trying to sell what’s possible rather than list out what they have achieved.
Mak Khuin Weng
Hope. It was what the united coalition of opposition parties of DAP, PKR, PAS and PSM were supposed to embody when it came together in 2008 to take on Barisan Nasional. It was easy to sell this imagery as it was riding on the coattails of the Barack Obama presidential election campaign where the word ‘hope’ was repeatedly spoken to remind everyone about what was possible.
Today, the remnants of that political coalition gather under the banner of Pakatan Harapan and is still peddling ‘hope’ to Malaysians by appending the Malay translation of the word to the coalition name.
Eight years on and they are still trying to sell what’s possible rather than list out what they have achieved.
The Sales Pitch
The first ever Pakatan Harapan gathering is a good example of how Pakatan leaders continue to sell ‘hope’.
The highlights include the announcements that Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia would join the Pakatan Harapan coalition soon, after the various party leadership had a chance to sit down to define a common policy on issues like Islam, freedom of religion, the position of bumiputeras and non-bumiputeras, and the need to unite all different political parties under one banner.
At a glance, these pledges are appealing because they would lay the groundwork for greater and better things to come and thus offer hope. All these pledges will be done ‘soon’.
No Decorum
But Pakatan Harapan is a non-entity just like its predecessor Pakatan Rakyat. It has no constitution, no articles of association, no membership form and no office bearers. It is an empty shell, to be filled by whatever promises and pledges the speaker desires to utter to the audience.
The recent Sarawak elections is a pretty good example of what the partnership means; when discussions on seat allocations between DAP and PKR collapsed, their leaders gladly told each other to go to hell (and this is just one of the milder examples).
A more recent example would be how a question by Kota Anggerik assemblyman Yaakob Sapari to Selangor State Exco Elizabeth Wong turned into a scolding session.
Yaakob had asked what the Selangor government doing to prevent Sungai Semenyih from being repeatedly polluted every year, to which Wong chided Yaakob for not attending the state assembly session the day before to listen to her answer. She then stated all the different measures that had been done to clean up the river.
Clearly, the question posed was not answered, but Yaakob kept quiet.
All this just shows the lack of decorum in how the coalition is supposed to communicate with one another. Again, there is no decorum because PH is a non-entity with no rules to govern the membership.
Trading Discourse with Insults
Resorting to insults and shaming is meant to stifle discussion and meant to bully the other person into submission. That way there’s no need to explain anything because I’m right and you are wrong.
Because clearly PH is still better than BN. Because BN is racist or sexist and that if you don’t support Pakatan, you are with Barisan and therefore evil, racist and stupid.
Any other opinion or viewpoint is unacceptable. So, no more discourse.
No need to explain how a RM250 million offer to buy SPLASH in 2013 can balloon to an offer of RM2.975 billion in 2016 because it was all Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim’s fault for agreeing to that outrageous amount while hiding it from the state assembly.
Indeed, if discourse were allowed, people would be asking why haven’t the Selangor government reported Khalid to the MACC and called for a third party to investigate the outrageous sum offered.
Or people may be asking just how the RM2.975 billion sum was arrived at by the Selangor government, because government rules disallow Khalid from making any offer that hasn’t gone through the valuation department (refer to the PKFZ case).
Notice how not a single soul from Pakatan has stepped up to question that if Datuk Seri Azmin Ali’s allegations against Khalid were true, it would also mean that the entire Selangor government has failed as a government and all the Pakatan elected representatives would be guilty of incompetence?
For certain, the rakyat is too stupid to ask these questions and all they really need is hope. After all, it worked in 2008 and 2013, so why not 2018, right?
