COMMENT Zaid Ibrahim’s decision to go on a road show to explain to supporters the reasons for his withdrawal from the ongoing contest for the No 2 position and his quitting of all posts in PKR places the party between a rock and a hard place.

No doubt this show, certain to expose the supposedly ‘dirty linen’ of the party, will be given maximum publicity by the Umno-BN supporting mainstream media.

This will hold the party to public odium and ridicule, precisely what PKR doesn’t need with a Sarawak state election and a general election in the offing.

NONEIf PKR decides to put a stop to Zaid’s expected denigration of the leadership of Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali by sacking him, it will furnish him the excuse he needs to form a new party.

No prizes for guessing how soon the Registrar of Societies will take to recognise the new party; it will beat the record for speed of registration by Makkal Sakthi and all those parties in Sarawak that split from the original SNAP, and from SNAP’s splinter, Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak, over the years.

Damned if you don’t and damned if you do are where PKR finds itself today with respect to the maverick whose membership of the party they rushed to invite and now live to rue.

Yet, it was not the decision to invite Zaid to join PKR that was the mistake (the DAP was also keen to have him join); it was the choice to allow a contest for the No 2 position that was the entree to the disaster now playing out in the public arena.

Blowing a hole in PKR’s hull

PKR finds itself in the position that is comparable to the one faced by Umno-BN in September 2007 when Anwar publicly disclosed that he had in his possession a videotape that purported to show judge and case-fixing.

The famous VK Lingam videotape helped blow a hole in the fuselage of Umno-BN. The upshot: a sinking of the ruling coalition’s hitherto unchallenged two-thirds majority in Parliament at the 12th general election six months after Anwar’s sensational disclosure.

The peregrinations of Zaid Ibrahim have the potential to blow a hole in the hull of PKR. It won’t sink the party but it would leave it battered and bruised in this period widely regarded as the immediate prelude to the 13th general election.

NONEBetter a battering from Zaid than his banishment from PKR because the latter would mean another expeditiously recognised opposition party.

Opposition leaning voters would be dismayed and confused by the emergence of a splinter party that would erode an already defection-undermined PKR.

Politics is not only the art of the possible; it is also about the wisdom of opting for the undesirable in preference to the intolerable.

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.