The Poison within PKR - Part III

Concluding my final part to The Poison within PKR and The Poison within PKR – Part II:

Read The Malaysian Insider’s PKR hits Mustaffa Kamil with show-cause letter.

Mustaffa was one of the disgruntled deputy presidential candidate in the recent party polls, where together with Zaid Ibrahim, he complained against irregularities in the party polling process. Zaid Ibrahim has since left the party to form his own, KITA.

Several others, like erstwhile Anwar-bodek-er but now Anwar-disparager, Gobala has similarly complained about what they perceived as gross dodgy-ness in the party polls. They included popular Badrul Hisham Shaharin, better known as Chegubard. Even leng chai Jonson Chong, a party moderate, exposed the alleged party polling nonsense openly in his inimitable polite style.

The list of party dissenters is fairly long, stretching all the way to Sabah. Anwar's last-minute candidate for the federal seat of Kelana Jaya, Loh Gwo Burne, he of the videoclip fame wakakaka, also was among those dissatisfied and wrote a letter to Malaysiakini criticising Azmin Ali - see my previous post Loh Gwo Burne & Gobala - one-term MPs?

Additionally, well-known political activist Haris Ibrahim has on several occasions presented evidence of the alleged party polling irregularities in his blog The People’s Parliament. So did RPK.

The most laughable part about Mustaffa’s show cause letter must go to PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution, who when asked by the press, said he … could not “remember” if the party leadership had issued the letter on Mustaffa.

His excuse? The Malaysian Insider reported that … "He however indicated that the party could have issued show-cause letters to more than one dissident leader” and that he signed over a hundred of these show-cause letters, thus he couldn’t remember if Mustaffa Kamil was one of them.

Bull! Mustaffa is not one of the party’s hoi polloi. He was one of only three deputy presidential candidates, and post-election the party even offered him a position in the party hierarchy, presumably to mollify him. So, how could Saifuddin claimed he can’t remember whether his secretariat had issued a show cause letter to a top party personality like Mustaffa Kamil. Looks to me like a sad case of payback time!

Remember, Saifuddin Nasution was the person who claimed P Jenapala was already sacked and thus a non-member when the latter raised complaints about his denied candidature for the party’s deputy presidential posts. Jenapala had followed due process and written 162 complaints to the party but none was entertained.

Associated with Saifuddin's claim of Jenapala's alleged non-membership was the by-now ‘notorious’ letter supposedly testifying to Jenapal's sacking - a claim which sent the normally moderate Jonson Chong ballistic. Jonson wrote in a long public letter of why that was just sheer bull (my words, Jonson is far too refined and polite).

The disgraceful scandal of the so-claimed sacking of Jenapala was so notorious (in its alleged fabricated letter of dismissal) that former PKR sec-gen Salehuddin Hashim emerged to sign an affidavit in court on 23 Nov 2010 that he, supposedly the one who signed that letter of Jenapala's dismissal, had no knowledge of the letter dated 2 Feb 2009. Salehuddin stated in his affidavit that the letter of dismissal was ‘not authentic’ as (quoting him) ‘the language, format and style of the letter is not mine’.

Additionally, Salehuddin asserted that the party sec-gen did not have the power under the party constitution to sack a member, where such power is exclusively vested with the party's supreme council. In other words, how could he (Salehuddin) have signed it?

So, when Saifuddin Nasution claimed he wasn’t sure whether a show cause letter had been issued to Mustaffa, I merely yawned. It seems Saifuddin doesn't know much about letters wakakaka.

Recently, Gobala was also issued a show cause letter, numbering a War & Peace-sized 45 pages. He was given only an unrealistic 7 days to respond. When he ignored that, claiming he wasn’t provided enough reasonable time to read and reply, he was given another 7 days (or so). Understandably, Gobala ignored it again.

When a show cause letter resembles a tome, the least the party people responsible for its issue should have given Gobala a month if not 6 weeks. That would in fact be what is meant by 'due process'.

Can you all recall how, in contrast, Anwar Ibrahim and the party leadership tap-danced around for agonizing months instead of issuing Zul Noordin such a show cause letter when the Kulim Wonder was running amok against party policies and undermining the party’s stand? Yet they provided poor Gobala only 7 days to answer to a 45-page show cause letter!

Maybe there’s some truth in Indians in PKR being discriminated – Nallakaruppan, Jenapala, Gobala - but let’s leave them for a while and move on to Zaid Ibrahim.

In spite of my hero Karpal Singh condemning Zaid, I have written in support of the latter – see my previous post Zaid Ibrahim - suffers no fool gladly.

When he was in PKR at the time leading to the party polls (before he tossed his hat into the election ring) Zaid Ibrahim was criticised for being erratic because one moment he said he would not challenge the deputy presidential post IF (initially) Nurul Izaah took up the challenge*, then IF (subsequently) Khalid Ibrahim did so, and the next (when both didn’t) he took up the challenge.

* Azmin Ali went into a panicky tizzy when Nurul causally mentioned her interests, and ‘advised’ Nurul against it because people would talk. Bet you Anwar had a few private words with Nurul

The standard anwaristas' cries against Zaid Ibrahim were his inconsistencies (in supporting Nurul, then Khalid, before standing as a candidate himself), and their accusations unimaginatively attacked Zaid for his lust for power.

But I didn’t see any inconsistency in Zaid’s manoeuvrings. In fact there was a very consistent objective in his support for firstly, Nurul, and subsequently for Khalid Ibrahim, before he personally challenged Azmin Ali in the party election. That objective was to prevent Azmin Ali from coasting home on an Anwar-provided free ticket into the deputy president post. He wanted Azmin Ali stopped!

Yes, Zaid was invincibly against Azmin Ali, the man for whom Anwar Ibrahim instructed Nallakaruppan to stand aside in a party VP contest some years back, and which drove Nalla out of the party in angry frustration. Nalla would have easily won that VP position because of the strength of his Indian supporters in PKR.

Count Ezam in as well among those frustrated by the Anwar’s blind support of Azmin Ali.

But no dount the anwaristas would say of Ezam and Nalla (and perhaps even Chandra Muzzafar) as they said of Gobala when the last criticised Anwar. Let us revisit the Gobala’s example which I wrote in The Poison within PKR – Part II:

Gobala might have hailed from MIC, supposedly a stigma that anwaristas have been hurling at him since he spoke out against Anwar Ibrahim. That’s the infantile stupidity of anwaristas. They seem to have forgotten that their very own icon and his blue-eye boy hailed from UMNO, and as another example, Chua Jui Meng was from MCA, etc.

Dismissing Anwar’s critics by pointing to their original political affiliations (Gobala from MIC, Zaid Ibrahim from UMNO, etc) while ignoring those of Anwar and Azmin (and Chua JM) is childish, double-standard, not objective, self deceiving, and can even eventually lead/escalate to accusing-stereotyping people like Gobala of being a “typical Indian”. Bet you that label has already been voiced within some groups in PKR.

and also

And haven’t party seniority and living the party's ‘trials & tribulations’ been the Azmin Ali camp’s arguments on why Azmin was far more deserving than Zaid Ibrahim of the post of party deputy president?

The blind double-standard hypocrites they are, their argument of ‘no to parachutist’ in the Azmin versus Zaid Ibrahim election tussle obviously doesn’t apply to the Gobala vs Surendran case.

Such double standard hypocrisy and Machiavellian manipulation to marginalize those members posing a threat to Azmin Ali have been the deadly ingredients which brew the poison with PKR.

Just double-standard fanatics, blind to their own follies.

Sure, the unfortunate outcome of Nalla and Ezam's unhappy encounters with the Anwar-only-for-Azmin stand has been their joining BN. But like the saying goes, 'Hell hath no fury like (someone) scorned' and Nalla and Ezam, both loyal to Anwar before the breakup, having suffered at the hands of BN because of him, were scorned by their former idol, in both cases because of Azmin Ali. They sought to vent their fury at him, and where better than from positions in BN.

There’s no doubt an issue of pesonal judgement in them deciding to join BN, but be that as it might be, let’s not forget or dismiss the underlying motivation (the cause), namely anger at Anwar Ibrahim, perhaps even hatred of their former leader who was seen to be disloyal to them. Loyalty has to flow both ways, or it won’t flow at all. But in Anwar’s case, it didn’t because of his non-negotiable support for Azmin Ali. He was seen to be only loyal to Azmin!

So Zaid tried his best to stop Azmin from becoming party deputy president, a post which is a mere heartbeat away from party president, which he would be when Anwar either retires, goes voluntarily into exile or is sent to jail. He challenged Azmin for the post. But Zaid withdrew midway when he saw he was going to fail, not because of lack of support but because of questionable polling process, a process queried not just by him but by several neutral notables like Jonson Chong, Haris Ibrahim etc.

This is the poison within PKR. So long as Anwar Ibrahim exerts an overpowering authority in the party, or even by remote control from, say, within jail, and continues to ‘clear the way’ for his Azmin to ascend to the top of PKR or have his way within the party, the poison in the party will continue to exist.

As I often said that change in UMNO must come from within, so I now say, change in PKR must likewise come from within. It’s up to the PKR people to deal with this plague of theirs.

Related:
(1) PKR without Anwar Ibrahim & Azmin Ali
(2) PKR party election - the horror stories continue