Selangor doom and gloom

Will Selangor voters give Pakatan a third term?

By Roslan Bistamam

There are two schools of thought regarding Selangor, in particular regarding whether Pakatan Rakyat can retain the state in the next general election. Some even wonder whether the Selangor state election will be held together with the 14th general election or earlier, as happened once in Kelantan and is currently the situation with Sarawak.

Some say Pakatan Rakyat Selangor is in such a mess that it is impossible for it to retain the state. We have the inter-party squabbles. We have the intra-party squabbles. We have the PKR party elections, which are an absolutes mess, with allegations of fraud and YouTube videos showing violence at voting centres.

Then there is the Kidex issue, the water issue, the Allah issue, the Bible issue, the Herald issue, and many more. Nothing seems to be going right for Selangor and one wonders why the Selangor voters would want to give Pakatan Rakyat a third term.

Hence the prognosis that this is Pakatan Rakyat’s final term.

I am not so sure though. I feel that the question, in the end, is this: If not Pakatan Rakyat, then who? Umno?

Umno Selangor is more or less dead. Even Umno thinks so. One wonders whether Noh Omar is really working for Umno or whether he is a Pakatan Rakyat Trojan horse paid to keep Pakatan Rakyat in power.

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak might not come across as the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but he certainly is not the dimmest either. So why can’t he see that Umno will never retake Selangor as long as Noh Omar remains head of Umno Selangor?

The reason that Najib cannot replace Noh Omar has nothing to do with Najib’s stupidity. It is all because there is really no one available who can replace Noh Omar. If you remove Noh Omar, whom do you replace him with?

That is the problem facing Najib.

Unfortunately, the only candidate better than Noh Omar is Muhammad Mohd Taib. But that man is no longer even in Umno. He is now in PAS. So can you imagine what a mess Umno Selangor is in when the best man to replace Noh Omar is a man who is a gone case, so to speak?

I mean it is like saying that Hitler should be removed and the best man to replace Hitler is Stalin. That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Because of this Pakatan Rakyat can continue making one blunder after another and voters will just sigh and still vote Pakatan Rakyat come the next election.

No wonder Muhyiddin Yassin refuses to take over from Najib and has threatened that if Najib is ousted he, too, will throw in the towel and retire. And that is why the warlords in Umno cannot oust Najib. If they do, Malaysia will lose both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and Umno will see the most severe power struggle for number one and number two it has ever seen.

Roslan Bistamam is a FMT columnist