Saturday, September 02, 2017

Dumbo Pakatan - OK with Mahathir but No to PAS

P Gunasegaram of Malaysiakini has the following (extracts) to say about Pakatan 'shortsighted policy':


stupid 


stupid 

clever 

Not having an electoral pact with PAS will mean unmitigated disaster for all the opposition parties, which makes it rather shortsighted for Pakatan Harapan to declare recently that it will not work with PAS. That does not mean that PKR can’t.

An electoral pact does not necessarily mean being part of the coalition - all it means is that the major opposition parties - DAP, PKR, PAS and Amanah, I don’t consider Bersatu a major party yet with just one seat - don’t contest against one another. And it will be possible to show to PAS that three-cornered fights will be extremely damaging to it too.

While DAP and others in PKR are okay with working with Mahathir and even support him and his party Bersatu, where the membership is purely racial, why is it they can’t even consider an electoral pact with PAS when that is so much more valuable?

What does PAS bring to the table? In the last election it won 21 seats, PKR, 30 and DAP, 38, to help form the 89 opposition seats. What does Bersatu bring to the table? One seat, that of former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Its pull was so little that it could get just one other seat - a state seat, that of Mahathir’s son Mukhriz. Yet, talk is that Bersatu could contest over 20 seats and is asking for 80!

So much more preference is given to Mahathir who, at least from the opposition’s point of view was a horrible prime minister, under whose hands some of the major current leaders of the opposition suffered and the rights of the rakyat took a beating. If Mahathir is okay for the common opposition move to oust Najib Razak, why can’t PAS be okay as well?

The split in the opposition is becoming rather obvious already with GE14 said to be just around the corner. Cooler thinking should prevail to consider, at the very minimum, an electoral pact.

Otherwise, as the analysis shows, you can pretty much say goodbye to any reasonable chance of an opposition victory. And the opposition may well be staring at BN regaining the two-thirds majority in Parliament that it lost in 2008.

3 comments:

  1. pact n beg carry same meaning kah? or depend on who do it?

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  2. Perhaps Pakatan hopes that Pribumi can split the UMNO vote in three cornered fights between UMNO/BN, Pribumi/Pakatan and PAS, just as PAS would split the PKR/Pakatan vote in contests between UMNO/BN, PKR/Pakatan or Amanah/Pakatan and PAS.

    However, dunno who will win the seat, even with the largest minority, in a three-cornered UMNO/BN, Pribumi/Pakatan and PAS contest. There is no precedent of such a three-cornered contest so far.

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    Replies
    1. like u said, fun. i suppose we r still a segregated society, that's y politician can offer quite diverse subject to diff crowd. bec almost every topic they use to attack their foe, is actually one they were once part of it.

      one classic comment i read is pas dulu kata umno kafir while umno tuduh pas sesak, kalu tak nak kafir dan sesak, undi pakatan wakaka.

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