200 chairs, 50 people for PH pre-election Deepavali gathering

 

Pakatan Harapan speakers tried to whip up the crowd at a gathering in Johor Bahru today with implausible assertions and broad claims.

JOHOR BAHRU: A pre-Deepavali gathering by Pakatan Harapan today, organised by DAP, failed to live up to its billing despite the zest of their speakers.

Publicised as a Deepavali gathering and community dialogue, the 40-minute delay to its 2pm start appeared an early signal of voters’ lack of enthusiasm towards the coming general election.

The dissolution of the 14th Parliament on Oct 10 was decried by PH on grounds it was heedless of the people’s need to be safe rather than sorry at the approaching monsoon season.

Despite their naysaying, PH is pulling out all stops for its election campaigning, but whether the people will buy into PH’s narrative of the exploitation of the many by the few is a hard sell these days when the 1MDB issue is no longer roiling.

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Two hundred chairs were laid out in the hall of the Johor Cultural and Sports Club but when the gathering got off to its tardy start only 50 people were in the hall.

Though the assembly grew in size as the afternoon wore on, the increase was marginal and their enthusiasm mundane; the emcee had to cue for applause.

Speakers Salahuddin Ayub, deputy president of Amanah, and four from DAP – strategist Liew Chin Tong, national vice-chairman M Kula Segaran, and lesser lights Kasthuri Patto and M Kannan – attempted to rev up the lacklustre proceedings through implausible assertions and broad claims.

Kula and Liew tried to stir up things by claiming that an Umno-BN victory in GE15 would see Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as prime minister, despite being laden with corruption charges, even if newly freed from a slew of them.

Kula and Liew’s claims were made despite the widespread perception that the only reason Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob went ahead and dissolved Parliament on Oct 10 was an assurance he received from Zahid he would stay on as prime minister in the event of an Umno-BN victory.

Kula pooh-poohed this perception by pointing out that in the Johor state polls in March, Umno had held up Hasni Mohammad as menteri besar-designate. In the event, young Onn Hafiz Ghazi was preferred.

Everyone, save possibly DAP, knows that Hasni did not become the menteri besar because the palace wanted someone else.

Unwittingly, DAP is lending credence to the story that the party is anti-royal, by insisting that the Johor volte-face by Umno provides the template for similar shenanigans at the federal level after GE15.

Predictably, nuances are squashed in a general election campaign so that when Salahuddin predicted 20 years of disaster for Malaysia should Umno-BN win, Liew roused the crowd by saying a PH victory would enable the coalition to restore a damaged nation in just 10 years.

Salahuddin and Liew left early for an engagement in Muar, leaving Kula and Kasthuri to hold the rhetorical fort.

But before long it was clear that PH would veer very little from its master narrative of Umno-BN’s decades’ long exploitation of the nation’s resources to enrich an incorrigible and wanton few. - FMT