Time for Pakatan old guard to go
Terence NettoPublished: Sep 6, 2014 4:53 AM | Updated: Sep 6, 2014 8:17 AM
COMMENT The now nine-month long saga of PKR's effort to replace their menteri besar of Selangor, Khalid Ibrahim, has become a mountain of a muddle.
The latest indication of its labyrinthine complexity is the uncertainty over which was the actual list of PAS' nominees for the MB's post.
Apparently, there was an initial list of three names. Then this list was reputedly countermanded by a second list.
If the first list was merely reflective of dissonance within Pakatan Rakyat about which PKR leader should be Khalid's replacement, the second list reeked of treachery: it reportedly had only the names of PAS' Selangor state councillors as the nominees.
If true, the latest disclosures in this drama are more sordid than sorry...
COMMENT The now nine-month long saga of PKR's effort to replace their menteri besar of Selangor, Khalid Ibrahim, has become a mountain of a muddle.
The latest indication of its labyrinthine complexity is the uncertainty over which was the actual list of PAS' nominees for the MB's post.
Apparently, there was an initial list of three names. Then this list was reputedly countermanded by a second list.
If the first list was merely reflective of dissonance within Pakatan Rakyat about which PKR leader should be Khalid's replacement, the second list reeked of treachery: it reportedly had only the names of PAS' Selangor state councillors as the nominees.
If true, the latest disclosures in this drama are more sordid than sorry.
That renders the positions of those chiefly responsible for this long running and self-inflicted spectacle of ineptitude untenable.
It would be the honourable thing for them to go rather than they preside over a situation where their parties or the overall coalition be sundered by the consequences of their asininity.
The federal opposition, Pakatan, is far too vital a political entity for it to be held to public ridicule by reason of the appalling judgement of a presumptuous coterie.
The drive for political change in Malaysia - more necessitous now than ever because of a government gone berserk in its enforcement of the Sedition Act - is vitiated by the continued presence of these suicidally flawed leaders.
They should begin their withdrawal to the exits and not hang around in their parties in the hope of something redemptive happening to retrieve their reputations.
Those reputations are damaged beyond hope of repair. The only mitigation available would reside in a decision by them to withdraw forthwith.
Lack of principle
Unmitigated disasters don't come more unmitigated than the Selangor MB replacement saga.
Every issue that has made Pakatan a credible alternative to Umno-BN - ability to distinguish between personal and public interest, weed out corruption, avoid cronyism and nepotism - has threaded through this sordid story of who is to replace Khalid as MB of Selangor.
But this percolation has only exposed some Pakatan components' lack of principle.
Additionally, there are the issues of inadequate consultation with coalition partners , of an Umno-like unilateralism, and of decisions being made from individual, or sectional, volition rather than from overall party interest that are also implicated in this sorry saga.
From the results of the last general election, it could be concluded that Malaysian voters are going to have to see Pakatan demonstrate that they can govern, not just markedly but radically better than Umno-BN has done.
In the sorry spectacle of an attempted replacement of the Pakatan point person for Selangor, some Pakatan leaders have shown that they have all the Umno-BN vices - as Winston Churchill observed of an adversary - that Pakatan supporters detest and the virtues the same don't admire.
All in all, it has been a chastening mess, chastening only if the culpable principals withdraw from the arena.
The mess would be catastrophic if they don't because a refusal to withdraw means their parties will be saddled with the loss of credibility their individual deportment had caused.
Senile dementia
Consider the historical example of United States President Richard Nixon, a leader with the strategic vision for a liberating paradigm shift in his country's geopolitics but lacking in the deportment that prevents foibles from eventuating in culpable disaster.
A recessional by the Pakatan old guard would allow a younger set of leaders to come through sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
It's not that the younger set possesses better potential to realise the Pakatan agenda for comprehensive political change to the country.
It's that, by dint of their youth, they have a greater appreciation for the expectations of the 52 percent of voters who gave Pakatan a plurality in the popular vote at the general election in May last year.
If the culpable set who have to withdraw had this sensitivity they would not have comported themselves the way they did in this saga of Khalid's replacement.
They have behaved like they have suffered from senile dementia.
Since they are pretty much advanced in age themselves, they should submit to the recessional requisites of their chronology and offer to grant gracefully - their exits - they no longer have the credibility to withhold.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.
The latest indication of its labyrinthine complexity is the uncertainty over which was the actual list of PAS' nominees for the MB's post.
Apparently, there was an initial list of three names. Then this list was reputedly countermanded by a second list.
If the first list was merely reflective of dissonance within Pakatan Rakyat about which PKR leader should be Khalid's replacement, the second list reeked of treachery: it reportedly had only the names of PAS' Selangor state councillors as the nominees.
If true, the latest disclosures in this drama are more sordid than sorry.
That renders the positions of those chiefly responsible for this long running and self-inflicted spectacle of ineptitude untenable.It would be the honourable thing for them to go rather than they preside over a situation where their parties or the overall coalition be sundered by the consequences of their asininity.
The federal opposition, Pakatan, is far too vital a political entity for it to be held to public ridicule by reason of the appalling judgement of a presumptuous coterie.
The drive for political change in Malaysia - more necessitous now than ever because of a government gone berserk in its enforcement of the Sedition Act - is vitiated by the continued presence of these suicidally flawed leaders.
They should begin their withdrawal to the exits and not hang around in their parties in the hope of something redemptive happening to retrieve their reputations.
Those reputations are damaged beyond hope of repair. The only mitigation available would reside in a decision by them to withdraw forthwith.
Lack of principle
Unmitigated disasters don't come more unmitigated than the Selangor MB replacement saga.
Every issue that has made Pakatan a credible alternative to Umno-BN - ability to distinguish between personal and public interest, weed out corruption, avoid cronyism and nepotism - has threaded through this sordid story of who is to replace Khalid as MB of Selangor.
But this percolation has only exposed some Pakatan components' lack of principle.
Additionally, there are the issues of inadequate consultation with coalition partners , of an Umno-like unilateralism, and of decisions being made from individual, or sectional, volition rather than from overall party interest that are also implicated in this sorry saga.
From the results of the last general election, it could be concluded that Malaysian voters are going to have to see Pakatan demonstrate that they can govern, not just markedly but radically better than Umno-BN has done.
In the sorry spectacle of an attempted replacement of the Pakatan point person for Selangor, some Pakatan leaders have shown that they have all the Umno-BN vices - as Winston Churchill observed of an adversary - that Pakatan supporters detest and the virtues the same don't admire.
All in all, it has been a chastening mess, chastening only if the culpable principals withdraw from the arena.
The mess would be catastrophic if they don't because a refusal to withdraw means their parties will be saddled with the loss of credibility their individual deportment had caused.
Senile dementia
Consider the historical example of United States President Richard Nixon, a leader with the strategic vision for a liberating paradigm shift in his country's geopolitics but lacking in the deportment that prevents foibles from eventuating in culpable disaster.
A recessional by the Pakatan old guard would allow a younger set of leaders to come through sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
It's not that the younger set possesses better potential to realise the Pakatan agenda for comprehensive political change to the country.
It's that, by dint of their youth, they have a greater appreciation for the expectations of the 52 percent of voters who gave Pakatan a plurality in the popular vote at the general election in May last year.
If the culpable set who have to withdraw had this sensitivity they would not have comported themselves the way they did in this saga of Khalid's replacement.
They have behaved like they have suffered from senile dementia.
Since they are pretty much advanced in age themselves, they should submit to the recessional requisites of their chronology and offer to grant gracefully - their exits - they no longer have the credibility to withhold.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.
View Comments0