Will Guan Eng be back as CM of Penang?

 

By Terence Netto

In late 2018, the Penang legislature passed an amendment to the state constitution barring an incumbent chief minister from serving a third term in office.

By the time the amendment was passed Lim Guan Eng, the chief minister for two terms from March 2008 till May 2018, had safely transitioned from Penang CEO to federal finance minister.

Now, after five years (one term) of a gap in occupancy of the chief minister’s office, Lim may be eligible to become chief minister again should he retain his state ward of Air Putih in polls that are expected to be held in July.

On the political grapevine speculation is humming that the former chief minister may make a return to the office if it is interpreted that the constitutional amendment of November 2018 only disbars an incumbent from a third consecutive term.

Constitutional amendments on matters like party hopping and term limits are famously abstruse: the grey areas frustrate sorting out.

Hence nobody is betting that Lim cannot come back.

Speculation he may come back has been given a fillip by rumours that relations between DAP chairman Lim and incumbent chief minister Chow Kon Yeow have been strained for some time.

In the cloudy world of intra-party policy disagreements and personnel preferences, it is fiendishly hard to say precisely what are the differences and who is rising and who may be slipping.

But things are not really nice and peachy between the party chairman and the state chapter head.

A more telling indicator of dissonance is the contrast in leadership styles.

Lim was an activist, assertive chief minister whereas Chow is dour and stolid.

Things got done on Lim’s watch simply from the chief minister telling state officers what purposes he wanted achieved on a given matter and what they ought to do to bring them to fruition.

Chow would rather want to hear the same officers on the viability of his objectives in a certain endeavour and take things from there.

One approach engendered activism, the other invited stasis.

Of course, before long observers commented on the differences in leadership styles and made their inferences.

A significant index was that the Malays did not seem to mind Chow but however much he did for their betterment, they did not warm up to Lim.

But Penang is better run under the DAP than under its predecessors, small matter if this was the case under the baton of Lim, and now under Chow.

The crucial question is whether Penang can configure a new paradigm of development, one that can fire the imagination of the non-Malays while not leaving the Malays adrift.

This is more realisable under a sympathetic central government which is what there is now, but the latter is having to tread very carefully.

Much too carefully for bold departures and new paradigms to make it matter, much that the new term of chief ministerial office is Chow’s or Lim’s. - FMT

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Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.