Predictably, Penang Umno has put an exploitative spin on the news that Deputy Chief Minister I Mansor Othman is to be the PKR candidate for the Nibong Tebal parliamentary constituency.
State Umno chief Zainal Abidin Osman, who lost the seat to PKR’s Tan Tee Beng in the 2008 election and is likely to vie again for the ward in the coming general election, has claimed that the move to send Mansor, the Penang PKR head, to Parliament is due to Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s displeasure with Mansor.
Like others of his ilk, Zainal (left) is driven to paint Guan Eng as the villain of the whole affair, the better to play to a spectral Malay gallery that is wont to see the DAP secretary general as a latent chauvinist.
Thus, according to this narrative, Mansor had incurred the CM’s ire for disparaging remarks about the DAP leader that was caught on audiotape during a PKR internal meeting last March that was ventilated months later by disgruntled elements within the party who were unhappy with the DCM I and wanted to embarrass him.
According to the Umno take, the move to field Mansor for Parliament - and take him out of the reckoning for the post of Penang DCM 1 - is to mollify Guan Eng after Mansor was seen to have been obstreperous to the boss.
This narrative fits the Penang Umno need to see villainy where less melodramatic and less devilish motives were in play.
The audiotape and the uncomplimentary remarks allegedly made by Mansor about Guan Eng owed more to internal PKR plots and manoeuvres than to overt resentment of the CM and the DAP.
That was why the ensuing contretemps, with its potential to cause a rupture in DAP-PKR ties, was swiftly contained, a reflection of the situation’s underlying innocuousness. Had relations between the parties been rancid, the upshot would have been perverse.
Privately, Guan Eng blamed the Chinese complement of Penang PKR, said to be bad-intentioned out of envy for the DAP, for the imbroglio, while Mansor claimed that his remarks were taken out of context to show malice towards the CM.
The thunderhead died down almost as quickly as it boiled up, largely because it was never previously suspected that Mansor had any apparent difficulty working with Guan Eng and vice versa.
Also, Mansor is the benign sort and Guan Eng’s pugnacity is only reserved for BN types and rarely directed at even those who are recalcitrant within the Penang Pakatan fold.
Even before the ructions caused by the ventilated tape, word had it that Mansor, a PKR national vice president, was slated to contest a parliamentary seat at the 13th general election.
This move owed more to the view that Mansor, who was a researcher in Universiti Sains Malaysia before he became political secretary to then-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in the year before the latter was sacked from Umno in 1998, was someone more adept in backing-up roles than frontal ones.
Not quite comfortable with upfront job
The Penang DCM I role is an upfront job in which Mansor, good man that he is though, is not quite comfortable. In politics, as in music, you cannot convert someone adept at singing seconds into a lead vocalist.
Mansor was headed for Parliament well before the controversy over his allegedly uncomplimentary remarks about Guan Eng broke.
But Penang Umno won’t have it any other way but perverse: Mansor, in its reckoning, would be persona non grata to Guan Eng after the 13th general election and therefore not tenable as DCM I.
However, the reality is more nearly that PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim has another candidate for the DCM I post, a person with the capability and articulation that Mansor and other contenders within Penang PKR for the job do not quite possess.
The would-be nominee is Penang-born and of proven credentials in his profession and has been courted by all sides of the political divide, including it is said by the DAP. He is politically unaffiliated and for that reason has been much courted.
The identity of the candidate is being kept under wraps for he is not very keen on joining the political fray and may be put off by the messy rituals that precede induction.
In other words, he has just that combination of capability and detachment that makes him attractive to all comers. The question of whether he will be parachuted straight into the DCM I post or be made to serve a term as an understudy is being mulled.
In any case, his emergence makes the quest for villains in the hype behind Mansor’s projected move to Parliament a case of much ado over very little.
State Umno chief Zainal Abidin Osman, who lost the seat to PKR’s Tan Tee Beng in the 2008 election and is likely to vie again for the ward in the coming general election, has claimed that the move to send Mansor, the Penang PKR head, to Parliament is due to Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s displeasure with Mansor.
Like others of his ilk, Zainal (left) is driven to paint Guan Eng as the villain of the whole affair, the better to play to a spectral Malay gallery that is wont to see the DAP secretary general as a latent chauvinist.Thus, according to this narrative, Mansor had incurred the CM’s ire for disparaging remarks about the DAP leader that was caught on audiotape during a PKR internal meeting last March that was ventilated months later by disgruntled elements within the party who were unhappy with the DCM I and wanted to embarrass him.
According to the Umno take, the move to field Mansor for Parliament - and take him out of the reckoning for the post of Penang DCM 1 - is to mollify Guan Eng after Mansor was seen to have been obstreperous to the boss.
This narrative fits the Penang Umno need to see villainy where less melodramatic and less devilish motives were in play.
The audiotape and the uncomplimentary remarks allegedly made by Mansor about Guan Eng owed more to internal PKR plots and manoeuvres than to overt resentment of the CM and the DAP.
That was why the ensuing contretemps, with its potential to cause a rupture in DAP-PKR ties, was swiftly contained, a reflection of the situation’s underlying innocuousness. Had relations between the parties been rancid, the upshot would have been perverse.
Privately, Guan Eng blamed the Chinese complement of Penang PKR, said to be bad-intentioned out of envy for the DAP, for the imbroglio, while Mansor claimed that his remarks were taken out of context to show malice towards the CM.
The thunderhead died down almost as quickly as it boiled up, largely because it was never previously suspected that Mansor had any apparent difficulty working with Guan Eng and vice versa.
Also, Mansor is the benign sort and Guan Eng’s pugnacity is only reserved for BN types and rarely directed at even those who are recalcitrant within the Penang Pakatan fold.
Even before the ructions caused by the ventilated tape, word had it that Mansor, a PKR national vice president, was slated to contest a parliamentary seat at the 13th general election.
This move owed more to the view that Mansor, who was a researcher in Universiti Sains Malaysia before he became political secretary to then-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in the year before the latter was sacked from Umno in 1998, was someone more adept in backing-up roles than frontal ones.
Not quite comfortable with upfront job
The Penang DCM I role is an upfront job in which Mansor, good man that he is though, is not quite comfortable. In politics, as in music, you cannot convert someone adept at singing seconds into a lead vocalist.
Mansor was headed for Parliament well before the controversy over his allegedly uncomplimentary remarks about Guan Eng broke.
But Penang Umno won’t have it any other way but perverse: Mansor, in its reckoning, would be persona non grata to Guan Eng after the 13th general election and therefore not tenable as DCM I.
However, the reality is more nearly that PKR supremo Anwar Ibrahim has another candidate for the DCM I post, a person with the capability and articulation that Mansor and other contenders within Penang PKR for the job do not quite possess.
The would-be nominee is Penang-born and of proven credentials in his profession and has been courted by all sides of the political divide, including it is said by the DAP. He is politically unaffiliated and for that reason has been much courted.
The identity of the candidate is being kept under wraps for he is not very keen on joining the political fray and may be put off by the messy rituals that precede induction.
In other words, he has just that combination of capability and detachment that makes him attractive to all comers. The question of whether he will be parachuted straight into the DCM I post or be made to serve a term as an understudy is being mulled.
In any case, his emergence makes the quest for villains in the hype behind Mansor’s projected move to Parliament a case of much ado over very little.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
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