COMMENT DAP secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has done himself and Pakatan Harapan’s image no good by removing two PKR state assembly reps from government-linked companies (GLCs) for abstaining on a motion tabled by Umno to halt land reclamation.

The move harms Guan Eng’s rise up the unofficial pecking order in Harapan, the newly-formed opposition coalition that bands together DAP, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara.

The coalition is without a paramount leader after Anwar Ibrahim was jailed a year ago following the loss of his sodomy appeal in the Federal Court. His wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, is the stand-in.

No one in the opposition pretends this situation can continue for long given speculation that Anwar is out of circulation for the long haul and therefore Pakatan has to find a credible second line of leadership or risk feeding the perception that the federal opposition is only the lengthened shadow of one man.

Guan Eng is in line for elevation up that hierarchy after having done a compelling job of leading the Penang state government in the last eight years, a period of welcome activism in vivid contrast to the sleepwalking years of his BN predecessor.

Latterly, however, Guan Eng has blotted his copybook with increasing traces of authoritarianism, a non-consultative approach to major decision-making, and prickliness to criticism and dissent unbecoming of one of Umno's more vocal critics of its conformist thinking.

The Umno-sponsored motion urging caution over land reclamation projects that was tabled in the Penang state assembly in November - absention from which by five PKR reps had stirred the CM’s ire - was the fruit of mounting concern of the citizenry over the disappearance of the island’s seaview, an allure prized among Penang’s several attractions.

Guan Eng has called two of the five PKR abstainers, who hold board positions in state-owned companies, “backstabbers” , an intemperate utterance more reflective of the CM’s intolerance of dissent than the gravity of the offence.

Actually, given the magnitude of the reclamation in the Batu Maung area off the south-eastern corner of Penang projected in the billion-ringgit Penang Transport Master Plan, the fact the PKR five abstained is a credit to their concern for the environment and deference to public anxiety on that score.

That two of the five by their abstentions had endangered their seats in state GLCs and have now paid the forfeit of sacking by the CM-cum-chairperson of their boards, is just the sort of conduct that Guan Eng would praise if done by someone in Umno-BN.

The fact that Saifuddin Abdullah, once a dissenter in Umno, occupies a high-profile post in Harapan, which he joined almost immediately after leaving his former party, is testimony to Harapan’s high estimate of politicians capable of percisely the independent conduct that the PKR duo are now carpeted for.

According to Guan Eng’s narrative of events, the PKR’s Ong Chin Wen (Bukit Tengah) and Cheah Kah Peng (Kebun Bunga) attended a pre-council meeting held before last November’s session of the state assembly where they agreed to oppose the Umno motion.

‘No one who can gainsay him’

But individuals who have attended such meetings say that when the CM is in the chair, there is really no one who can gainsay him.

This is a source of abiding disgruntlement in PKR central and the state wing of the party towards Guan Eng.

PKR central would like to place in chair of the the Deputy CM (1) someone who can steer Guan Eng into a more consultative leadership mode.

They can’t find such a leader. The quality of the three PKR central have placed in the role since 2008 - Fairus Khairuddin, Mansor Othman and Rashid Hasnon - describe the range between embarassingly ineffectual and barely competent.

It is a major defect in PKR that in the state Anwar Ibrahim comes from they can’t find a Malay leader who can pace Guan Eng to the advantage of not only of PKR but the whole idea of the supposedly multiracial coalition that Harapan (and before that, Pakatan Rakyat) purports to be.

Even if they find one, it is doubtful that Guan Eng will allow that leader to pace him. For PKR, it is a lose-lose situation.

Guan Eng is trying to portray the conduct of Ong and Cheah as a plot against DCM Rashid just as he tried to do when Mansor was caught out a few years ago referring to the CM in derogatory terms (an audiotape had Mansor using the term ‘tokong’) at a meeting between the then-DCM and Penang PKR’s Chinese leaders.

Instead of asking Mansor to explain, Guan Eng played the whole episode as a plot by the Penang PKR Chinese complement against Mansor. Now he is attempting the same tactics between Ong-Cheah and Rashid.

Divide and rule is not just a colonial preoccupation; it is a temptation of those who purport to want to free us from current oppressions.

In the present dispute with Guan Eng, PKR’s claim to the moral ground must be seen against its recent decision not to include Dr Aziz Bari in the DAP-commended list of municipal councillors for Ampang.

The inclusion would have facilitated Aziz’s placement as a DAP candidate for a state seat in Selangor in the next general election, a move that could pave the way for his nomination as menteri besar should the party win a plurality among Harapan contestants at the polls.

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.