Contesting Sg Siput will muddy Harapan’s credential as a reformer

The merits and viability of their socialist agenda aside, Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) has produced an exemplary Member of Parliament in Dr Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj.

The threat by Perak DAP to field a candidate to contest both Jeyakumar and the BN nominee in the coming general election (GE14) would send the wrong signal to the Malaysian electorate.

It would semaphore the message that the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan, which is composed of Bersatu DAP, PKR and Amanah, are heedless of the merits of an MP whose dedication to his constituents is regarded as the standard to emulate by other MPs.

One can view the socialist agenda as utopian and unworkable and still regard Jeyakumar as an outstanding elected representative.

The PSM decision to contest in 20 federal and state seats in GE14 is likely to see the party involved in three- to four-cornered fights in some of them, such as the state ward of Jelapang and the parliamentary seat of Cameron Highlands.

As retaliation, the DAP which holds Jelapang and narrowly missed out in Cameron Highlands at the last election, has threatened to field a candidate in Sungai Siput, Jeyakumar's field of electoral endeavour in four general elections since the 1999 one.

He won the last two on a PKR ticket – scuppering the redoubtable S Samy Vellu in 2008 – and now, for GE14, his party wants him to contest in Sungai Siput, using the PSM symbol.

And, about the PSM symbol...

Many would argue that the symbol – an upraised clenched fist against a red backdrop – is unsuitable in this country with a past history of bloody struggle against militant communism.

Also, technological innovation in the workplace has made union-organising and agitation horribly passe.

But trying to persuade the leading lights of PSM about this would be as futile an endeavour as attempting to tell PAS that Malaysia can be a well-governed, economically vibrant and stable country without the imposition of Islamic law on its Muslim citizens.

Arguments such as the socialist model of development failed in over two score nations of this world in the last century, and is spectacularly flopping in Venezuela in this one, are apt to elicit the response from socialist true-believers that it had not really been tried or that foreign subversion (read capitalist powers) has caused it to fail in the countries where it has been tried.

Not even the perspicuity of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's dictum that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts” would suffice to impress these believers that a system which encourages people to give according to their ability and take according to their need will come unstuck from the inherent limitations of human nature.

That being so, it's best for aspirant governors of the social democratic school – which broadly describes the operating ideology of Harapan, or what passes for it – not to undercut the provenly exemplary mettle of a fellow oppositionist such as Jeyakumar.

This, even when his party is going to spoil Harapan's chances of winning seats such as Semenyih, Kota Damansara and Cameron Highlands that Harapan lost in GE13 and in two of which PSM members contested and lost.

PSM operates on the conceit that if its personnel have been working to help the poor in a constituency for five years, they are entitled to contest the seat, even if the ward has seen candidates from Harapan component parties vie for them.

It's a presumption it pays Harapan to ignore in the current phase of the coalition's evolution.

Hostility, in the form of Harapan threats to Jeyakumar's re-election chances in Sungai Siput, is more likely to increase sympathy for him than inviting critical examination of the socialist project, replete though it has been with failure in the last century and in, Venezuela's instance, in this one.

With the passage of time, and the possibility of a Harapan victory eventuating in an end to BN's depredations, PSM, not to mention PAS, will be consigned to being outliers in the national political landscape.

As ever, the best test of truth is the ability of the proposition – socialist or theocratic or whatever else – to withstand the competition of the market.

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others. - Mkini