RPK too limited in 'thinking out of box'

RPK and blogger Masterwordsmith have both just questioned PKR’s inability to think beyond Anwar Ibrahim as the Pakatan’s PM-designate. In other words, the PKR people hold a dangerous belief in the indispensability of Anwar as the leader of Pakatan. RPK worries their inability to think ‘outside the box’ may in fact be putting Anwar in greater danger from UMNO, leading it to believe that to destroy Pakatan, they must first destroy Anwar.

RPK and Masterwordsmith also accuse PKR and PAS for failing to directly defend DAP against Utusan’s vile fabrications that DAP plans to amend the Constitution to make Malaysia a Christian nation. I won’t bother to comment on this as it’s known that where the ’supreme’ race & religion are involved, PKR and PAS would normally keep mum for fear of being seen as too ‘liberal’ by the conservative Heartland - am not going to waste time asking the reluctant to do the impossible.

But on their principal point, PKR's erroneous perception on Anwar's indispensability as Pakatan head, it really beggars belief that PKR members can’t see beyond Anwar, as if the man is immortal and will be forever around. Or, perhaps PKR members are expecting Azmin Ali to automatically assume Anwar’s post as Pakatan leader when Anwar is not available?

Significantly, on a leadership alternative to Anwar (at Pakatan and not PKR level), both RPK and Masterwordsmith did not mention Azmin Ali at all, wakakaka.

You need to understand that Azmin is in reality only a political pygmy in the Pakatan scheme of things, and not even a successful politician at that. We have already witnessed his serial failures in Sabah, party polls, Sarawak and recently, PKR-DAP relationship. He survives only because of Anwar; without Anwar he is nobody. Thus, Azmin has a femtometer-thin possibility of succeeding Anwar’s position and status as the assigned leader of Pakatan.

Now, it so happened that on 24 November last year, I posted PKR without Anwar Ibrahim & Azmin Ali, triggered by a Malaysiakini news article '400k PKR members, where art thou?' which questioned PKR on its real membership figure. There has been a nasty suspicion PKR has creatively jacked it up humongously for the purpose of gaining advantage over its Pakatan allies in seats negotiations.

I had then written (extracts):

However, my post is not so much about the numbers per se, but the longevity of PKR as one of the Pakatan trio. In this, naturally I have to raise questions about Anwar, and since Azmin Ali is so closely tied in with Anwar, him as well.

Naturally I included my reasons for not supporting Anwar, based on why I didn’t believe in his reformasi credentials. I wrote:

Anwaristas and most of his supporters have been deceiving themselves by arguing that anyone, anything would be better than further enduring the UMNO-BN sh*t. Let me ask: aren’t Anwar Ibrahim and Azmin Ali also UMNO sh*t?

Changing an Anwar/Azmin-led PKR for UMNO is just changing sh*t. Then, some anwaristas, not accepting their icon is not deserving of our support, came along to say: Anwar sh*t is better than UMNO sh*t, and so the arguments continue on, along the line that Anwar, regardless of his faults and weaknesses, is better than any UMNO leader.

Well, what can you say about people who are prepared to eat sh*t?

They’re of course the same people who indiscriminately labelled Zaid Ibrahim, Gobala, RPK, etc as frogs without even evaluating why these guys had left or was pressured out, like Nallakaruppan, or in RPK's case, stating the brutal truth about Anwar. I can also confidently predict they’ll do the same to anyone else who may leave PKR in disagreement with the Anwar-Azmin duo.

I also wrote that notwithstanding my sneers at PKR, it can still be a good party, and worth voting for ... provided it gets rid of Anwar, Azmin and their inner coterie. Zaid Ibrahim had also said the same thing, that for the good of PKR, Anwar and Azmin should leave PKR.

It certainly speaks well of Zaid’s courage if not political correctness that he made that brave but necessary call when he was still in PKR.

In an earlier post The Poison within PKR - Part III I wrote of Zaid:

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 criticized 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.

Ironically, my hero Karpal Singh who dislikes Zaid Ibrahim, had actually preceded Zaid in a call for Anwar to go. After the disgraceful and reformasi-blasphemous 916 nonsense, Malaysiakini reported in a news article that Karpal told Anwar to step down as the Pakatan head. The Lion of Gelugor lamented:

"I am somewhat confounded how Anwar could have openly espoused and encouraged crossovers after the people gave a resounding mandate to the Pakatan on March 8 last year."

"In the public interest, and in particular in the interest of the Pakatan, Anwar has a lot to answer for creating the woes of the Pakatan now."

But getting rid of Anwar and Azmin from PKR may be far more difficult than my admittedly simplistic suggestion. Thus I offer another suggestion, that if Anwar and Azmin won’t leave (and you may take it they won’t willingly), the PKR members, those who aren’t part of his inner coterie, should themselves leave the party.

But where would they go then? Actually there is precedence. When Abdul Rahman, who held KeADILan membership No 3, left together with Johari Jasin on issues related to PKR party elections (just like the Nallakaruppan, Gobala, Zaid Ibrahim) he joined PAS. PAS accepted him.

Thus I urge DAP to open up to PKR members who want to join them, with the condition they must not hold or carry over any MP or ADUN status won under the PKR banner unless they resign from these MP/ADUN positions. If the DAP doesn’t accept good people who had enough of Anwar-Azmin bullsh*t but who don’t want to join PAS, it’ll just drive them into BN hands ... and who's to be blame then?

I had reckoned the scandal, complaints and questions over the last PKR party polls might have been a blessing in disguise because it should have woken up PKR members and supporters to the ugly reality existing in PKR. But alas, sterling examples of such awakening have been few. Apart from those who left with a huff and puff, only Jonson Chong has the guts to publicly proclaim he no longer recognizes the undemocratic nonsense of Anwar Ibrahim as the de facto leader of PKR, while Chegubard has publicly criticized Anwar for his bias in the party polls.

I had also hope they would be brave enough to consider their party without Anwar and Azmin (meaning, get rid of these two), but alas, even with the recent bad behaviour of their party leaders in the Sarawak election and propensity to offend the leaders of both DAP and SNAP, most have adopted a zombie-like silence. Maybe they have been frozen stiff like a certain PKR leader, who was described by Terence Netto (MKINI) as like a deer caught in a car’s highlights?

This has my biggest disappointment with some of my PKR friends. Instead of standing up bravely like Chegubard and Jonson Chong, they have all bunkered down like deers ostriches.

RPK proposes Nurul Izzah as a worthy successor to Anwar Ibrahim, a nomination which Zaid Ibrahim had also indirectly supported during the party’s deputy presidential race. OK, she appears bright and promising as a politician, but her age? RPK of course dismisses her tender years as a constraint to her potential to head Pakatan (the alternative Malaysian PM), but pray tell me, which political leader in the world is only aged late 20’s to early 30’s, without the surname of Kim (wakakaka)?

Besides, I’m not supportive of a dynastic approach per se to PKR leadership.

I know in Malaysia political leadership, has been oligarchical in effect, especially in UMNO but not excluding DAP, thus I wonder whether RPK had been subconsciously influenced by it. No doubt Nurul will one day be a leader, if not the leader, but that doesn’t mean that PKR or worse, Pakatan, should adopt the UMNO style of oligarchical leadership.

Maybe a non-Malay PKR leadership may be thinking much too far out of the box that RPK wants us to, wakakaka. Pity Zaid Ibrahim has left. But what about Khalid Ibrahim, Fuziah Salleh, Mansor Othman? Don’t tell me that PKR suffers from a paucity of able leaders?

And since we’re talking about a leadership candidate for Pakatan (and not just PKR), why restrict ourselves to only PKR? We should seriously consider PAS’ Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin – see my 2009 post Nizar in federal politics - unlimited potential where I wrote on Nizar’s suitability as a Pakatan (not just PAS) leader:

… he could, as a potential PR leader, give Anwar a run for his money, and through that, possibly allay the concerns (but perhaps not ambitions) of Pak Haji Hadi Awang.

Nizar as a potential future PM could satisfy both the PAS rightwing elements as well as the non-Malay parties of the PR, like DAP (I list ‘parties’ as I expect a few more to join PR).

He alone in PAS has the potential and personality to keep the politically-divergent component members of the PR together as a cohesive group. In this potential he would render Anwar Ibrahim totally irrelevant to the needs of the coalition.

This is important because Anwar has since 916 lost a considerable quantum of his (undeserved) sheen by his unmitigated nonsense on the froggie approach to seizing power, refusal to discipline the thuggish Kulim Wonder, and through the shameful and equally alarming cases of alleged corruption among his PKR politicians.

Nizar, as a potential future PM and a political leader capable of holding PR together without any man man lai bull, has a very attractive appeal to people like kaytee ;-)

If the royal house of Perak is to be ever thanked at all, thank the Regent for his unprecedented intervention (or interference) in the selection of the PR MB for Perak, which sweetly turned out to be a serendipitous choice for us.

Wakakaka, Fate has a funny way of gifting many Malaysians with the leadership of Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, a man respected, admired and adored by many Malaysians of all shades, hue, creed, religious affiliation and background. Dirgahayu Nizar.