Pakatan disunity preferred to BN’s unequal coalition
BN today has become a coalition of many irrelevant parties dictated by one supreme overlord and this subservience makes their ‘unity’ easier.
Wan Saiful Wan Jan, Free Malaysia Today
In October 2016, MCA president Liow Tiong Lai said that the opposition’s desire to ensure a straight fight against Barisan Nasional (BN) is just “empty talk”. He was quoted as saying that members of the opposition coalition have big differences between each other and this will lead to them fighting each other.
Liow is exactly right. The opposition coalition has no clear leader today and their leaders send conflicting messages to the public.
Since the break up of Pakatan Rakyat, and despite the formation of the new Pakatan Harapan (PH), they have not been able to come up with a coherent and unified policy platform. That may very well lead to multi-cornered fights, just as Liow predicted.
The weakest point for PH is when they are asked to name their candidate for prime minister. The answers that they have given so far have been weak and unconvincing.
One side of PH wants to have Anwar Ibrahim as the prime minister. In their desperation to show loyalty to Anwar, some PH leaders have suggested that once they win, they will get Anwar to be pardoned by the Agong so that he can contest and eventually become prime minister.
For this to happen, they also suggest that PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail should be appointed interim prime minister, warming up the seat until her husband is freed.
There is another group who wants PH to move beyond Anwar. They are not saying Anwar should be forgotten. But they feel we cannot have a puppet interim prime minister. The premiership is not something that can be tossed around between husband and wife as they wish.
Hence, this second group insists that someone else should be named as PH’s candidate for prime minister. Several names have been proposed, including Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’s (PPBM) Muhyiddin Yassin.
There is also another group who simply want to avoid the issue altogether. They find it too difficult to give a straight answer, and, rather than working it out, they skirt the issue.
As an excuse they claim that it is too early to think about who will become prime minister because, according to them, PH should focus on issues that are more important to the people.
In short, PH is so divided and they can’t even unite on one of the most fundamental questions that any rational voter would ask. Surely PH leaders realise that the whole country is asking the question.
So Liow was absolutely correct when he implied that Pakatan may find it difficult to ensure a straight one-to-one fight in the next general election (GE14). But even though I agree with Liow on that point, I disagree with the insinuation that he is making.
Liow is insinuating that the disunity in PH is a bad thing.
Yes, the disunity may make them lose the general election even before parliament is dissolved. But I believe if you look at it from the perspective of longer term national interest, that disunity is actually key to the maturation of our competitive democracy.
Liow was obviously comparing PH to BN and that is where he is wrong. He thinks BN is a “united” coalition. That is false. BN is not united as such. They are merely subservient.
BN today has become a coalition of many irrelevant parties dictated by one supreme overlord. They are no longer equals. The big brother is free to entertain or ignore other minions as they wish.
For example, when Chinese schools were having difficulty to access their funding recently, Liow was only able to say that he will “follow up” with the prime minister on this issue.
Worse, MCA’s Senator Chong Sin Woon who is also deputy education minister was reported as saying “MCA insists that Chinese primary schools should receive the full allocation.”
When a deputy minister can only “insist”, and a full minister can only “follow up”, you know how influential the party is.
Of course the MCA may eventually get the money but the rule remains, namely, MCA can beg but they must obey. If they disagree with a decision, all they can do is just “insist” and “follow up”.
The relationship in BN is more like a master and a servant, not a relationship between equals.
