If there is one indication that the tables have turned in Sabah PKR, it is that “director of communication” Ronnie Charles Klassen is going virtually berserk since the discovery this month that his post does not even exist.
There appears to be a new order emerging in Sabah PKR and one that former vice-president Jeffrey Kitingan might have quietly applauded if he had stuck around long enough to savour the moment.
While Jeffrey may be quietly happy for the dwindling band of his supporters still with the Sabah chapter, Klassen does not like what is happening in the party. For one, he feels “personally threatened”, to use his own words.
In the kind of language that has become almost a mannerism with him, Klassen called party president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail a blatant liar of the highest order for being dismissive of his role in the party.
Wan Azizah, the newly-appointed Sabah PKR chief, informed the local media that the party did not have a director of communication, that there was no such provision in the party constitution. Klassen, she surmised, must have appointed himself.
The local media could be forgiven for concluding that Wan Azizah appeared to be perplexed, at one point, on who or what Klassen was in the party. She could not recall having met him, if at all.
These things can happen only in Sabah.
Klassen has tried to explain to anyone who cares to listen that he was indeed appointed properly as the director of communication by then vice-president Azmin Ali when he helmed Sabah PKR in late 2009 for a brief two months. He even insisted that he had a letter of appointment from Azmin, but so far no one has seen it.
Interestingly, Klassen didn’t upload his appointment letter in his broadside against Wan Azizah on his blogsite.
Klassen has a point when he says that not all posts need to be mentioned in the party constitution. For example, he noted, the constitution does not mention the post of Ketua Umum, held by Wan Azizah’s husband, Anwar Ibrahim.
Apples and oranges
But comparing the post of director of communications with the position of de facto chief is like comparing apples and oranges. The de facto chief is a person around whom the entire party naturally gravitates, notwithstanding there being a party president.
Still, there is no reason why the party cannot have a director of communication in Sabah. The circumstances surrounding Klassen’s appointment is a matter of semantics, as can be made out from his belabouring of the point in his blog. The exception is that Wan Azizah may not feel that Klassen is exactly cut out to be director of communication. It takes more than having the gift of the gab in the English language.
By declaring that Klassen was a non-issue, Wan Azizah has gone to the heart of the problem in Sabah PKR.
Until recently, the Sabah PKR blogsite and blogs related to it have been host to writings that attacked party leaders who, it was felt, had no place in the party. No one has dignified such attacks, but Jeffrey was one of those who bore their brunt. Christina Liew Chin Hadhikusumo was another.
Klassen tried to oust Liew from her position as Kota Kinabalu division chief during the party election last year. Among the promises he made was that children of party members in KK – all rich Chinese – would get RM200 each if they did well in the UPSR examination. In the end, after all the bluff-and-buster, he could only muster an embarrassing 84 votes.
Liew has since become Wan Azizah’s right-hand in Sabah PKR, although she would be the first to deny it.
Naturally, suspicion falls on her for Klassen’s “ouster”. It is unlikely that she had anything to do with it. Liew, as a senior lawyer, would just have to give her legal opinion on the circumstances surrounding the so-called appointment of Klassen as director of communication.
If Jeffrey had still been with Sabah PKR, Klassen would have been fingered him too for the alleged ouster.
Klassen is in fact an ex-Jeffrey supporter who “defected to the other side”. He must have been debriefed for months on Jeffrey & Co. Jeffrey, however, fortunately or unfortunately, doesn’t have the kind of mean, vicious and vindictive streak that former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad enjoys flaunting.
When Klassen was not attacking his own party leaders – and very senior ones at that – he turned his wrath on journalists and websites who did not sympathise with those he supported. He was not constrained to dish out unsolicited advice when he felt like doing it and even “reveal” embarrassing details in the process.
Out of luck
Klassen, a former fun fair operator, did not hesitate to lecture even senior journalists on what their profession should be all about.
Not many people are going to shed tears over Klassen’s being stripped of whatever legitimacy and locus standi he had managed to claim while carrying on as “director of communication”. He ran out of luck when certain people who turned a blind eye to the alleged “gross abuses” of the director of communication had their wings clipped.
It’s about time that something was done to heal the wounds in the Sabah chapter and bring the warring factions together again. There is a need for Sabah PKR to make common cause with other opposition parties to take on the Barisan Nasional. Taking a leaf from Sabah BN, the opposition in the state – local and national parties – must stand united if they are going to have a fighting chance at all.
Wan Azizah has taken the first step by surgically removing the cancer sores in the party body politic and setting up a presidential council for Sabah. This is what Klassen himself had been advocating in his blog postings. Now the council will be able to do what the various state chiefs have not been able to do so far – get the local chapter fighting fit for the next general election.
It’s not too late for Klassen and the other anti-Jeffrey factions who feel left out, under Wan Azizah, to accept their karma and thereby neutralise it. As one sows, so shall one reap.
As vice-president Fuziah Salleh correctly read in Kota Kinabalu not so long ago at a Chinese New Year dinner function, both Sabah and Sarawak are easy states for the taking, compared with those in Peninsular Malaysia. It’s only opposition disunity that can ensure that the BN continues to win there by default. - FMT
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