Sabah PKR: A pattern of serial disaster

COMMENT Bad enough he resigned but when he coupled that with a defection to Umno, it was enough to confirm PKR's choice of leaders for its Sabah chapter as a story of serial disaster.

The resignation of Ustaz Pajudin Nordin, the Sabah PKR chief appointed to the post by the party's central leadership council as recently as Jan 9, and his highly publicised defection to Umno would be akin to opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei resigning and joining dictator Hosni Mubarak at this stage in Egypt's unrest.

Surely, one exaggerates, but the steady haemorrhaging of leaders by Sabah PKR had, until Pajudin's exit, yet to see a leader scuttle and then show up almost immediately in the ranks of the adversary.

Abandoning ship is bad enough, but doing so after being appointed skipper of the crew and following that up by joining a pirate ship is treachery most odious.

Pajudin's surprise appointment last month as Sabah chapter chief, the incipient mutiny he faced, and now his resignation and enlistment in Umno is certainly the quickest turnover in a state where party allegiance is a maddening game of hopscotch.         

Sabah PKR has been in tumult since October 2009 when Dr Jeffrey Kitingan was not chosen by the party central leadership council to head the chapter. Instead Thamrin Jaini was appointed.

Proxy battle between powerbrokers

The fact of the matter is that the internecine battles within Sabah PKR are a proxy fight between Tuaran division chief Ansari Abdullah and Jeffrey, the power broker for the KadazanDusunMurut (KDM) community, who last month left the party after he grew weary of waiting for PKR central to deliver on its promise to respect state autonomy.  

The vendetta between Ansari and Jeffrey was already intractable before it was complicated by last year's contest for the deputy president's in PKR between Azmin Ali and Zaid Ibrahim.

Lawyer Ansari, an ally of Anwar Ibrahim's from Abim (Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia) days in the 1970s, naturally backed Anwar protege Azmin while Jeffrey fell in with Zaid.

The latter proceeded to make a sorry spectacle of himself, raising fears that the whole tableau of his quitting Umno on principle in late 2008 and joining PKR in mid-2009 was contrived to further covert ends.

Meanwhile, the Batu Sapi parliamentary by-election in Sabah last November, which saw Ansari fielded as the PKR candidate, only confirmed the Jeffrey-supporting KDM bloc's suspicion that PKR central had no intention of respecting local chapter autonomy when it came to matters within that purview.

PKR central's adherence to the principle of local autonomy would surely have meant that Ansari would not have been the candidate for Batu Sapi. The near total boycott of Ansari's campaign by factions favouring Jeffrey only underscored the factional strife in Sabah PKR.

Also, PKR central's respect for local autonomy would certainly have meant that Pajudin would not have been appointed as state chapter chief last month simply because he was not the popular choice.

That would have been rather easily ascertained if PKR central had consulted the divisions because after the announcement of Pajudin's appointment, 18 of Sabah's 26 divisions (Labuan included) banded together to demand his ousting.

Festering sore

The question is why does PKR central find it difficult to consult with its Sabah wing's leaders before making decisions affecting the overall leadership of the chapter?

It may be due to barely concealed contempt for the moral fibre and intellection of the local leaders which is why there is no motivation to consult.

It may also be due to the perception that Sabah's illegal immigrants' problem - a festering sore in the welter of problems besieging the state - is inherently irresolvable, a Pandora's box that would suck Peninsula politicians and high-ranked former civil servants into its vortex. The fact that these illegals are Muslim only compounds the whole issue.

Also, it may be due to a perception in PKR central that if Pakatan Rakyat wins enough seats on the Peninsula in the next general election, it won't matter who leads Sabah PKR because anticipated crossovers from Sarawak and Sabah BN would ensure a Pakatan majority in Parliament.

That Sabah PKR appears to be reeling from serial setbacks is simply another symptom of a malaise afflicting the entire Malaysian nation for which a Pakatan-wrought change is viewed as the panacea - for the Peninsula perhaps, though not for its Borneo wing.

There, ‘Semenanjong' types are viewed as people who merely affect to understand Borneoan problems but lack the will to solve them, either because of cultural or religious inhibitions.

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.