Anthony Loke’s choices

After months in office, the government remains clueless and directionless.  Its legislative agenda is in shambles. Its reform agenda is a joke. Its economic agenda is vague at best. Fighting corruption – the centrepiece of the unity government – is little more than a farce. While the MACC has been weaponised against Anwar’s political enemies, his friends and allies get DNAAs and reduced sentences. In the meantime, UMNO wreaks havoc unchecked upon the political landscape by exploiting racial and religious issues in a desperate attempt to regain its popularity. 

Dennis Ignatius

In a recent interview, DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke admitted that there was dissatisfaction within his party over several issues. However, he questioned if quitting Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration would be the best option for DAP, as it would mean the government would lose its majority and the party would be forced to go back to the drawing board. “Is that what we want right now?”, he asked. Answering his own question, he said he was confident that the grassroots would not want to see such an outcome.

Loke presents the options before the DAP at this point of time as a choice between supporting the unity government or leaving it. As disappointed as they are with the unity government, most Malaysians I think are not quite ready to abandon it; they still cling to the hope that it is possible to sew a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

But Loke seems to be overlooking the most obvious option: stay within the unity government but live up to his promises; stand up for what is right. After all, people expect the DAP to be true to its principles, principles it has fought for for more than 50 years. People expect the DAP – the largest single party in the unity government with 40 parliamentary seats – to moderate the influence of UMNO, to keep the government on course with its reform agenda, to act decisively to quell the racial and religious fires that UMNO seems intent on starting. In other words, to provide the kind of effective leadership that is so clearly lacking within the unity government.

And this is where the DAP under Loke’s leadership is failing. On issue after issue, issues of great concern to Malaysians, the DAP has sat on its hands, kept silent or offered lames excuses for the failures and missteps of the Anwar administration.

After months in office, the government remains clueless and directionless. Its legislative agenda is in shambles. Its reform agenda is a joke. Its economic agenda is vague at best. Fighting corruption – the centrepiece of the unity government – is little more than a farce. While the MACC has been weaponised against Anwar’s political enemies, his friends and allies get DNAAs and reduced sentences. In the meantime, UMNO wreaks havoc unchecked upon the political landscape by exploiting racial and religious issues in a desperate attempt to regain its popularity.

Does the DAP not care enough about the deteriorating condition of our nation on so many levels to exert itself, to show some leadership even at the risk of offending its partners in the unity government? Is it no longer capable of providing effective and inspired leadership?

If the price of power, the price of sustaining the unity government, is to say nothing and do nothing for fear of upsetting others, then surely the DAP is better off leaving. If it can’t use its influence to build that better Malaysia that we all dream of, why stay and be a part of an increasingly clueless and incompetent ethno-religious apartheid administration?

In 2001 when prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared at the Gerakan Party conference that Malaysia is an Islamic state, the DAP excoriated the MCA and the Gerakan for not protesting his remarks. Today, the DAP acts as a tacit enabler to something far more troubling – Anwar’s Islamist agenda.

For decades, parties like the MCA, MIC and Gerakan clung to the strategy of not provoking UMNO in the hope that they could get a better deal for Malaysia’s minorities. All it did was make things worse for everyone, Malays included. If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it is that if political leaders don’t stand up for what is right for the country when circumstances demand it, we all pay a price.

Whatever it is, Anthony Loke shouldn’t be too dismissive of the growing disappointment, disillusionment and dissatisfaction of both his members and the many voters who have supported his party’s struggle. Sowing fear about the so-called “Green Wave” can only go so far. Unless the unity government changes course, unless the DAP itself begins to show some real leadership on critical issues, voters might find less and less to distinguish the unity government from the Opposition.

So, Mr. Loke, by all means stay if there’s a chance the DAP can make a real and meaningful difference in the unity government but please go if the choice is to remain a mute witness to the decline of a once great nation.