Pakatan kept intact by sense of history and destiny

Contrary to Umno’s wishful thinking, the opposition pact is much more than just a marriage of convenience

COMMENT

Most of us have become tired of hearing from Pakatan Rakyat detractors that the opposition alliance is a marriage of convenience, an unholy pact motivated solely by a common hatred of Umno, but Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak keeps singing the same tune—and ever more loudly these days.

According to this theory, the marriage will not last; the pact will fall apart immediately after the next general election.

It is a theory based mostly on wishful thinking and urged on by hype. And Najib, as everyone would have noticed by now, is one man who believes in hype. So he keeps on singing his signature tune, at a higher and higher pitch.

If it is true that Pakatan will fall apart, he should have nothing to worry out, and does not have to sing himself hoarse. Obviously, he has yet to convince himself that he is right.

If there is one factor that will keep parties together in a coalition, it is the common fear of losing power. This has been amply demonstrated by Barisan Nasional over the last 50 years or more despite there being a great deal of unhappiness within the coalition with Umno’s disproportionate share of the spoils of office and power.

The Pakatan parties will be no different on that score as demonstrated by their ability to hang on to power in the states now under their control. Umno’s best efforts, after Perak, were not good enough to sow the seeds of division in the opposition pact.

All that the hard work has yielded are a few defections to the BN-friendly camp. And this is not so surprising, given the “every man has his price” measuring rod worked out by the Special Branch for Umno.

What is keeping Pakatan together is a profound sense of history and manifest destiny.

All ruling parties bite the dust sooner or later, and it will be poetic justice indeed to see Mahathir Mohamad, Najib & Co jostle with each other in a mad scramble to leave the country and avoid counting the bars for the rest of their days.

Umno’s day of reckoning is coming sooner rather than later and the opposition alliance is geared for that challenge. They believe—and there is no reason why they should not—that they will be in Putrajaya as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Umno, having outstayed its welcome, is not the only factor motivating and driving the opposition and giving it a sense of history and manifest destiny. But one cannot deny that this is the main factor. Adding to the worry of the Umno warlords, Umnoputras and the various varieties of sycophants and hangers-on is the fact that the party can no longer rely on political detention as a weapon to drag out its days in power.

The result of the opposition leaders cooling their heels in prison under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) has often been complete disruption of any organised opposition to the ruling party. In effect, the ruling party has all these years been returned to power by default as much as by massive electoral fraud.

The numbers game

The BN itself, by its very concept, circumscribed the democratic process by endorsing elite power-sharing and denying the grassroots meaningful participation. Coalitions were not put together after an election, but before, by sharing out the seats among component parties, while locking up opposition leaders under the ISA. The results were a foregone conclusion.

The BN concept began coming apart during the last general election. The division of seats among component parties no longer worked because the opposition was equally organised. They proved themselves better at the numbers game.

In the coming election, the opposition will again allot Malay majority seats to PAS and the PKR and Chinese-majority seats to DAP. One caveat is the opposition fielding Indian candidates to take on Indian candidates fielded by the BN.

Umno has killed itself by refusing to create even a single Indian state or parliamentary seat in Peninsular Malaysia and by making BN’s Indian and Chinese candidates dependent on Malay votes to win.

These Malay voters are no longer interested to vote for BN’s Indian and Chinese candidates and hence such seats are destined for the opposition. If Perkasa makes good its threat over that racist novel, Interlok, MIC will be history, and that would be good news for the Indian community and the opposition.

Candidate or no candidate, Indians can decide the fate of 67 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia.

The BN cannot win even a single Chinese-majority seat. Only the opposition matters in such seats, and doubly so if Indian and Chinese voters are treated as one voting block. DAP can easily end up as the party with the largest number of seats in Parliament.

The bottom line is that Umno has become synonymous with the state. Every organ of state functions like a branch of Umno. Many Malaysians want to end this situation.

The changing of the guards in Putrajaya will enable a complete shake-up of the organs of state to weed out hardcore card-carrying Umno members. A distinction must be made between party and government and between a political party and the state.

In the current situation, no one knows where politics ends party and good government begins. The Umno Supreme Council, for example, has been known to dictate how the Federal Cabinet should decide and function. Likewise, it has directly interfered in the running of the government at all levels.

Even the most fanatically loyal Umno diehards would not claim that their party is here to stay forever, bucking the verdict of history.