March 2, 2013
Tunku Aziz: Farewell to Hypocrisy
by Tunku A Aziz @http://www.nst.com.my
I AM not a gambling man but, just this once, I will bet my shirt on Pakatan Rakyat ever getting to within a thousand miles of Putrajaya, the “castle in the air”, which has occupied their waking hours since they tasted the sweet fruit of their freak victory in five states in the 2008 general election.
Putrajaya will be a different story. It will continue to be for years to come nothing more than a gleam in their eye, an object of their heart’s desire that will be out of their reach.
Pakatan, for all the veneer of political sophistication, is essentially an odd assortment of desperate quixotic political adventurers, lacking both experience and expertise of what it takes to govern effectively a complex nation.
The Democratic Action Party (DAP), for example, has been too long in opposition.Its thinking about Malaysian society is by design skewed towards chauvinism.
Multiracialism, the public face of the party, is merely part of a carefully laid long-term strategy of deception to allay the growing Malay antipathy towards what they see clearly as a dyed-in-the-wool Sino-centric political cell dedicated to weakening further the position of the Malays.
DAP recognises that ambitions for control of this country cannot be achieved without massive Malay support which continues to be elusive.
For all their entire mighty roar, Pakatan is a paper tiger chasing its own tail. Just how fragile the fabric of Pakatan unity is can best be judged by the regular exhibition of histrionics and the unbelievable political theatrics that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is credited with introducing to the otherwise staid Malaysian scene.
Unity of purpose is reduced to the lowest common denominator, and expressed in such elegant turn of phrase as “Hudud, over my dead body” that today is associated with Karpal Singh, and for which he will always be remembered by the adherents of Islam in the country.
We are being treated, with regular monotony, to incessant unedifying squabbles over issues that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Mutual suspicions have taken deep roots, and mutual exploitation follows naturally, eroding further the already unstable foundation of the DAP-PAS marriage of convenience.
The public quarrels over the allocation of seats in the next general election are not a pretty sight. In any analysis of the state of their relationship, unquenchable greed, with generous lashings of barefaced cynicism, is one discernible, overarching element that comes to mind.
Greed for power is what so far has kept the quarrelling Pakatan tribes of religious bigots and rabid revolutionary socialist ideologues from descending into a full-scale fratricidal orgy.
Having had the dubious privilege of feeding from the same trough with them, and seeing them operate at close range, I am not at all sure that we can entrust the future of our country in their grubby little hands. I am not convinced of their ability and, equally important, their wisdom to run a country that is still, in nation-building terms, a work in progress, a nation in the making.
It is not a job for the shrilly, strident ideologues, particularly those with a blinkered, distorted vision of national unity, of whom there are many to be found in the serried ranks of the Pakatan leadership line-up.
One other thing that worries me about the DAP is their attitude to questions of national security and law and order.As an example of their attitude, let me relate this little incident. On April 25 last year, I received an email from DAP headquarters in these terms asking if I would be attending the Dataran Merdeka sit-in. I replied to the effect that, “I am in principle opposed to street demonstrations”.
As readers may remember, Dataran Merdeka had been declared a prohibited area and, therefore, anyone joining a demonstration there would be breaking the law.
Breaking the law is anathema to me and I was shocked to read a response from the party’s most senior member and mentor in which he said, “delighted to participate in the sit-in. This may be the beginning of a Malaysia spring”.
This, unfortunately, is not an isolated sentiment; this is clearly on their political agenda when they urged thousands upon thousands of people to come out in support of a demonstration that they knew to be illegal, hoping it would lead to similar developments as in Egypt and other Middle East countries we saw unfolding on our television screen.
The sad part about it all is that the incitement to break the law of the land that could, as it did, lead to violence was encouraged by party leaders who, as members of parliament, were lawmakers.
In a perverse sort of way, I am glad this happened when it did as it confirmed my growing suspicions about the party.I made up my mind that the time had come when I had to say farewell to hypocrisy.