Umno bloggers gunning Ku Li

It must be assumed that Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah commands allegiance from people within Umno itself, otherwise why would Pakatan Rakyat be keen on him?

COMMENT

There is no present or past tense in politics. There’s only relevance.

Is Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (Ku Li) relevant? In my mind, given the manic and xenophobic stage of our politics, we urgently need political sanity.

How do we achieve that? Through a leadership committed to the rule of law, fair play and inclusiveness, and democratic and liberal principles.

Relevance comes with the commitment to immutable principles – a sense of fair play, rule of law, good governance, and jealous adherance to democratic principles.

It’s funny to see judgmental stands on this – Razaleigh is old, yet (Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad), who is in his 80s, is waiting in the wings because some people think he is relevant.

I am old, but (Prime Minister) Najib (Tun Razak) and (his deputy) Muhyidin (Yassin) who are older, aren’t classified as old.

Hence old, young, or whatever is just management of subjective and very personal numerical perception.

It depends on how you want to angle it. Hence the managed perception has no universal application. It’s subjective.

A frequent objection to Razaleigh has been this concerted effort to link him with the infamous (Bumiputra Malaysia Finance) BMF financial scandal (in the 1980s).

As Finance Minister at that point in time, Razaleigh had no involvement at all with the BMF scandal.

BBMB (Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Bhd) was answerable to the PM’s office at the time and the person principally responsible over BBMB affairs was Mahathir.

Razaleigh won many defamation cases against international newspapers which attempted to link him with the BMF affair. But these legal victories received scant coverage in local papers controlled by Mahathir.

Set ground rules first

Now to me the urgent matter at hand is for the big three in the opposition to sit down and talk about rational seat allocations. But they must first accept their individual limitations and establish the ground rules for negotiations.

The negotiations should start with each of the big three being given the same number of seats. There are 222 seats so each party gets 74 seats.

After that, all sit down to renegotiate and rescale the numbers.

No party should be fielding a candidate where one of the partners has been given a seat. Ideally it should be a one-to-one fight with the “winnable” BN candidate.

How does Razaleigh fit into the scheme of things?

At this moment we can only assume Razaleigh commands allegiance from people within Umno itself.

Some of these may not be fielded in the coming elections by Umno, but I would certainly think, they will contest and some of them will go on to win.

We must assume there is a number, otherwise why would Pakatan Rakyat be interested in Razaleigh?

As outsiders, we don’t know the real extent of Razaleigh’s support. The players would know better.

Again, if this assumption is not tenable, Umno can dismiss it.
But from the way pro-Umno blogs have started to cast aspersions on Razaleigh, they know he is a significant player.

The writer is a former Umno state assemblyman and a FMT columnist.