Never too late to do the right thing

Last Saturday, I had lunch with someone from the SNAP corner somewhere in PJ.

He laid before me his reasons why I was wrong in the recent conclusions and public statements I had made of and concerning SNAP.

I gave him my reasons why I remained unconvinced by his attempts to persuade me to his point of view.

However, I conceded that I did not have cold, hard evidence that pointed irrefutably to treachery on the part of SNAP. All I had was strong circumstantial evidence that, for me, left me with the sense that all was not well in SNAP and that there were moves by certain quarters from within the party that would undermine efforts to bring about a regime change in Sarawak.

“Could I be wrong in my conclusions about SNAP?”, he asked.

I replied that I hoped SNAP would prove us all wrong, in which event I would gladly publicly apologise to all those that I had named in my ‘BN-ning SNAP…’post.

Yesterday, FreeMalaysiaToday reported that PKR’s Baru Bian urged SNAP to withdraw in contests where both SNAP and PKR were contesting, to enable PKR to take BN head on in a one-on-one contest.

“I heard many of them are not making any headway. If this is the case, I advise them to withdraw and throw their support to Pakatan Rakyat candidates. After all our aim is to topple this government and bring change to Sarawak. The Barisan Nasional state government is our enemy and we should pool all our resources to defeat them”, Bian is reported to have said.

SNAP has responded to this call with a proposal that, in my view, places the burden on PKR to now walk its talk.

Malaysiakini reports that shortly after Bian’s appeal, SNAP advisor, Daniel Tajem responded to the same by proposing that both SNAP and PKR now sit down together, assess the strengths of their respective candidates in the overlapping seats, and pick the stronger for a straight contest with BN.

And, it would seem from the report, that this was previously proposed by Tajem at the very outset of the failed negotiations between the two parties.

“I welcome the suggestion by Bian that we don’t contest seats where we are in multi-cornered fights with the BN. But let him quickly get together with us and show in which seats Snap are lagging in candidate strength and party machinery effectiveness and we, on our part, will do likewise for areas in which we feel PKR are defective. Let us then sort this out very quickly and mutually agree to allow the one to make way for the other on application of the test that I first suggested as a method of settlement of our overlapping claims when talks on seat sharing were held between our two parties.” , Tajem is quoted as saying.

In a post on 4th April, I called upon Tajem to speak up.

Whilst Tajem has not said anything to put to rest the several concerns raised in that post, I think there is tremendous value in his proposal.

My sources in Sarawak inform me that DAP is doing well in the 15 seats that they will be contesting in, and that we can expect them to take more than 10 seats.

24 seats are needed to deny BN a 2/3 majority in the Sarawak state legislative assembly.

A compromise between PKR and SNAP, as proposed by Tajem, offers the best prospect of denying BN that 2/3 majority, taking into account the seats that DAP will capture.

I would suggest one modification to Tajem’s proposal, though, to make it workable.

Both parties agree to leave the final decision to an independent arbiter, if they cannot themselves come to a consensus as to the better of their respective candidates in the overlapping constituencies.

Baru, Tajem, time is fast running out.

If both of your respective parties truly share the common objective of ousting both Taib and BN through this state election, act now.

- The People's Parliament