UBF needs drastic re-think on 3rd Force ideals

COMMENT The Third Force in Malaysian politics, hopefully soon in the Parliament, was initially heralded with much fanfare by its proponents in recent months as a politically equidistant movement.

Strictly, this means being neither “friends” of the ruling BN coalition nor slavishly rooting for Pakatan Rakyat, the opposition alliance.

Now, no one is really sure what the Third Force stands for in the Malaysian political theatre.

Mostly, this is due to former PKR vice-president Jeffrey Kitingan emerging as a bundle of contradictions with a Dec 31 “emailed” resignation to party president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. Jeffrey had been expected to lead the Borneo-based Third Force as a national movement for change and reform.

Jeffrey claimed during a lengthy discussion at his house in Likas on Monday night that he is still committed to Pakatan and still considers himself a member of the opposition alliance although he has resigned from PKR. This sounds like former PKR senior activist Zaid Ibrahim all over again, saying that his politics had always been about Pakatan and not PKR.

Jeffrey’s game plan

Only an aide, Phillip Among, was present to help work on two small baskets of red jambu and small tangerines. A Timorese attendant hovered in the background.

Jeffrey couldn’t explain how he can consider himself as being with Pakatan when he isn’t a member of any party in the opposition alliance. He could only manage: “Can mah!”

Pakatan doesn’t have direct membership nor does it provide for a “Friends of Pakatan” arrangement like that announced recently by BN. Jeffrey thinks that he can unilaterally declare his United Borneo Front (UBF), a movement similar to Hindraf, as “Friends of Pakatan”.  
Jeffrey’s game plan is to explain the Borneo agenda to political parties across the divide as a first step and next to the people in Sabah and Sarawak through a series of Borneo tea parties. Finally, he hopes to convince Prime Minister Najib Razak that it’s in his coalition’s interest to accept the Borneo agenda. He plans to present Najib with a memorandum on the Borneo agenda.

He has ruled out “internationalising” the Borneo agenda for the moment “since we must first exhaust all avenues within the country”.

However, while UBF would stay away from Hindraf for the moment, his Common Interest Group Malaysia (Cigma) would continue to work with the latter on the plight of marginalised communities in Malaysia. He plans to present a Cigma paper at a Hindraf conference in Kuala Lumpur on Jan 23 on the plight of the marginalised communities in Malaysia.

This is the second attempt that Jeffrey is making to see Najib with a memorandum on Sabah and Sarawak.

His first attempt was early last year when he pulled out from a presentation arranged by Hindraf at the House of Commons in London on the Malaysia Agreement. Instead, another two Cigma activists made the presentation.

At that time, it appears that he was persuaded that Najib would see him to discuss the grievances of Sabah and Sarawak. Najib has kept Jeffrey waiting with his memorandum since early last year and there’s no sign that the prime minister would ever see him.

Jeffrey was extremely upset with a comment piece that Malaysiakini had published the same morning on his resignation. “You hentam me like hell?” was his opening remark, his face “going this way and that way”, at the 11pm meet which went on until 2.30am.

“Now, people think that I am greedy for the deputy prime minister’s post and that’s why I left”.

‘Ex-aide jumped the gun’

Jeffrey explained that he had to announce his resignation on Dec 31 after a former aide, Kanul Gindol, writing under a pseudonym in an online news portal, “jumped the gun and prematurely disclosed his resignation which had in fact not been finalised”.

Gindol’s excuse, according to Jeffrey, was that he “didn’t want Malaysiakini to scoop him”. Jeffrey apparently admonished Gindol: “Do I have to suffer as the victim just because you guys want to scoop each other?”

Jeffrey’s initial response to “Kanul’s news manufacturing” was to deny the report through Cigma organising secretary Guandee Kohoi. Jeffrey, however, had second thoughts soon after Kohoi’s clarification.

He released a statement through UBF activist, lawyer and social activist Nilakrisna James, that he had quit PKR. Jeffrey meanwhile cannot explain why he had to make Gindol’s speculation come true.

Instead, he has plenty to beef about de facto chief PKR chief Anwar Ibrahim. The PKR leader, Jeffrey is firmly convinced to the point of paranoia, is a diehard believer in ‘ketuanan Melayu’ (Malay political supremacy and dominance) and wants to impose “this vile right-wing ideology” on Sabah and Sarawak “through local proxies, stooges and traitors”.

“We will fight this (ketuanan Melayu), win or lose, to the bitter end”, swears Jeffrey. He cites the goings-on in PKR as an example and “unfulfilled promises in Sabah and Sarawak”.

The internal affairs of PKR aside, it seems that Jeffrey is punishing his former party for the sins of Umno in Sabah and Sarawak and what it (PKR) may or may not do when it seizes the reins of power in Putrajaya.  

The least that he could have done was to seek clarification on the “unfulfilled promises” from the PKR leadership at the party headquarters before throwing in the towel. This he failed to do, and instead chose to strangle himself, if not the party, to death in Sabah and Sarawak. It’s difficult to believe that Jeffrey does not have a “death wish” in politics.

There has been no word from the opposition alliance on UniborF being Friends of Pakatan. It has been learnt that Sarawak PKR senior activist Michael Bong called Jeffrey and had a lengthy discussion on his resignation from the party, and presumably on the “friends” arrangement.

Kota Kinabalu PKR division chief Christina Liew disclosed that both Anwar and senior Lembah Pantai activist David Yeoh tried to get in touch with Jeffrey by telephone but failed. Jeffrey, when asked by text message, denied ever receiving any calls from the two gentlemen, and in the process, mentioned Bong. He didn’t go into details.

Among ‘not compromised by BN’

On Tuesday, Jan 4, Among rang Malaysiakini to confirm that he had quit as Jeffrey’s aide and would no longer be involved in his politics. Besides, he added that Jeffrey doesn’t need him for the Borneo Agenda being flogged by UBF.

Among bristled when it was suggested that he was quitting Jeffrey’s politics because he had achieved his primary objective of getting his former political master out of PKR and “weakening him to the point of irrelevance” in the process.

He is also unhappy with suggestions and allegations that he has been compromised by BN. He sees nothing wrong in working with the ruling coalition since “they are in power and can help do something about the Borneo agenda”.

Among claims that the memorandum is just an excuse to meet Najib “and discuss other things”.  It’s difficult to see what those “other things” could be except to discuss the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) headed by his elder brother Joseph Pairin.

The elder Kitingan, it is learnt, had advised Jeffrey to see Najib and discuss the possibility of him taking over the reins of PBS from him.

Jeffrey, in a text message response to Among’s “I quit Jeffrey” statement, pointed out that “anyone can print a business card saying that he or she was an aide of so-and-so”.

Hindraf chair P Waythamoorthy (right), in a telephone call on Wednesday night from political asylum in London, frankly confessed that he needs to go back to the drawing board on the Third Force.

However, his movement remains committed to raising the plight of all marginal communities in Malaysia.

Waytha had little to say on Jeffrey’s resignation from PKR. Instead, he indicated that he wants someone to help broker a peace agreement between the opposition alliance and his apolitical ad hoc human rights movement.

Earlier, he had all been gung-ho about Jeffrey’s resignation from PKR but provided the latter had an alternative Third Force political vehicle in place. Hindraf’s political wing, the Human Rights Party Malaysia, is willing to contest in 15 parliamentary seats and 38 seats in peninsular Malaysia under Jeffrey’s vehicle.

JOE FERNANDEZ is a freelance writer based in Sabah.