COMMENT On May 19 last year, MP for Padang Serai N Gobalakrishnan turned up at a madrasah in Permatang Pauh for a ceremony in which PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim was guest of honour.

Present were Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, Deputy CM Mansor Othman and state minister for religion Abdul Malik Abul Kassim.

NONEThough Gobala, as he is commonly referred to, was a late arrival, his entry did not go unheralded. The emcee duly acknowledged his presence and applause rippled through the crowd as Gobala took his seat in the row behind VIPs Anwar, Lim, Mansor and Malik.

After Lim had presented the Penang government's RM1.7 million in aid to 19 religious schools whose representatives were present to receive their cheques, and after the speeches by the VIPs were over, a simple lunch was served.

Lunch over, Gobala was seen dismissing his driver as he joined Anwar in the latter's car for what was presumably a tete-a-tete on the way to the next function in the PKR supremo's visit to Penang that day.

Seasoned observers of intra-PKR politics, noticing the manner in which Gobala got into Anwar's car, would have guessed that the talk on the journey would have revolved around some matter Anwar wanted to discuss with one of his strongest advocates in the party.

On Gobala's part, he would have used the opportunity to, among other things, extend a personal invitation to the opposition leader to attend the MP's 50th birthday celebrations scheduled for later that month at the Kulim Club.

Gobala's presence at the madrasah and his departure in Anwar's company at its close were all indicative of the fraternal ties between valued leader and ardent follower.

But, as seasoned observers of the game know, fraternal ties between patron and ward in politics are not always durable; and their severance is often accompanied by bitterness barely less noxious than when formerly ardent couples quarrel.

Gobala seen to be close to Zaid

Gobala is the fifth PKR MP to quit the party in the last 12 months, following Bayan Baru's Zahrain Mohd Hashim, Nibong Tebal's Tan Tee Beng, Bagan Serai's Mohsin Fadzil Samsuri, and Wangsa Maju's Wee Choo Keong.

Will the sacking for gross indiscipline of Kulim Bandar-Bahru's Zulkifli Nordin, the tally of former PKR MPs out in the cold is six.
Only Gobala's departure was avoidable. The rest were departures that were predictable, even in a sense, welcome.

Zahrain views politics as economic opportunity; Tan had lifestyle choices that were corrosive to personal integrity; non-entity Mohsin's got his chance for MP-ship from the acute drought of candidates for PKR in the 2008 elections; and Wee is a perennial malcontent. As for Zulkifli Nordin, he is a classic fifth-columnist.

A year on since their departures, self-willed or enforced, the party is better off without them. By contrast, Gobala's departure was not predictable; hence avoidable.

PKR stalwarts would think that Gobala's departure is no loss to the party. They feel he does not have the intellectual fiber to occupy the post of vice-president reserved for Malaysian Indians and that all of his only recently expressed disgruntlement with the party stems from disappointment at not being appointed to the post. (Lawyer N Surendran was preferred).

Further, PKR defenders hold that if Gobala felt he merited the post, it was just another example of someone overreaching; presumption being a self-inflicted thing, with the sufferer making a sorry spectacle of self, which one can only help at the risk of stirring the sufferer's wrath.

On the other side of the ledger, what can be said for Gobala is that had there not been a contest for the deputy president's post in last year's party elections, there would not have been the spawning grounds for his exit.

NONEThe contest for the deputy president's post between, essentially, Azmin Ali and Zaid Ibrahim (though Mustapha Kamil Ayub participated in a three-cornered fight, he was not a serious threat) inevitably meant that Gobala was going to take the side of Zaid.

Gobala had an infamous run-in with Azmin early last decade, the PKR deputy president having uttered a slur against Gobala that could not be excused and for which Azmin did not apologise.

Not considered veep material

Gobala did well in the initial rounds of balloting for the elected veeps' posts. In the flush of that initially good run, he was confident he would not suffer from the downside of Zaid's highly disheveled departure from the race, amid allegations of irregularities in the vote.

But when his rival for the post of appointed Indian veep of PKR, Dr Xavier Jeyakumar, overhauled him in the final tally of votes for the elected vice-presidents' posts, Gobala began to cry foul and decried the entire vote as tainted with fraud.

Still, there remained his hopes for selection to the appointed Indian vice-president's post. He felt he deserved more than Surendran or Xavier because he is more fluent in Tamil and understands the culture better.

But the top leadership felt that Surendran's higher education and immersion in human rights issues in which mainly Indians are hard done by tilted the choice in the lawyer's favour. Gobala, then, proceeded to publicly display a level of petulance that, ironically, had the effect of confirming he is not veep material.

In the end, his lack of intellectual fiber did him down but things would not have come to that had there not been a contest for the deputy president's post.

That contest cast a bitter pall over the whole party. It effects are being felt even at the current Tenang by-election where PKR's presence is almost non-existent though Anwar continues to draw crowds with the magnetism that once drew Gobala into his embrace.

The problem is whether that magnetism can obviate the divisive forces in the party represented by warlords that separate contenders for the party's lesser pickings into ‘them' and ‘us'.

 

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. It is the ideal profession for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.