Did you expect Dr M to be a puppet, PPBM man asks DAP MP

PPBM Supreme Council member Tariq Ismail.

PETALING JAYA: A PPBM Supreme Council member today criticised a DAP MP who called for a review of the decision-making process by the Pakatan Harapan (PH) Presidential Council.

“I wonder what DAP thought would happen when they agreed (that) Dr Mahathir Mohamad would be the PM,” Tariq Ismail said in a statement.

“Did they think the PM of Malaysia would be the puppet on a string while the ‘real’ power is wielded ‘equally among all parties of PH’? Or did they think Mahathir would cow down and turn the PM-ship into an advisory role?”

Klang MP Charles Santiago yesterday said the power to make decisions at the executive level should be shared equally among PH component parties, especially on controversial issues involving race and religion.

Saying there seemed to be too much power in the hands of the prime minister, Santiago had claimed that Mahathir was making unilateral decisions for the people at a troubling frequency.

“We can’t get rid of former prime minister Najib Razak only to become just like him,” he had said.

However, Tariq claimed Santiago was only trying to appease the hardcore DAP members by “disguising dissatisfaction and greed over the existing power sharing formula with (the) purported failure to meet election promises”.

Tariq said the prime minister had always been the “CEO of Malaysia”, while his Cabinet members make up his team who support and challenge him “but never to mutiny” or “to such an extent it would be tantamount to a change in the constitution”.

Ultimately, everyone would have to sacrifice a little of the party line to promote national interest, he added.

“In fact, from what I’ve heard, many of the existing Cabinet members would, in a corporate environment, have been sacked for acts of insubordination against their superiors, had this been a corporate situation of course,” he claimed.

“However in Malaysia Baru politics, parties such as DAP and PKR have been consistently and insistently trying to change the power structure and what is an accepted global governance principle, supposedly in the name of political transparency.

“My reading of the situation is that since some ministers represent different parties, the party line is upheld above and beyond national interest and the collective Cabinet/Cabinet committee decisions, including national policies.

“I do wonder then, should we question such insubordination and call them out as treason? I would be inclined to do so.”

Tariq added that if DAP was “really sincere” about uplifting the well-being of Malaysians, it should have called for a reconciliation of national priorities instead of trying to become “Umno Inc, the sequel”.

“This is the crux of the matter – the sharing and growing of the economic pie whereas the ‘sharing of power equally’ gambit is just smoke and mirrors in the race to monopolise that pie.

Now that Umno and BN are out of the pie, DAP should take a step back and ask themselves if they are willing to forego control of the economic pie for peace and harmony,” he said. - FMT