PKR - ‘A New Hope For Malaysia’

Recent political developments suggests what many had lamented for a very long time, Malaysian politics is certainly dominated by personalities rather than policies.

For example, if any other prominent leader in another country tries to do a Sept 16 government takeover and fails, he would have been now shunned by the populace and become a political deadwood by now.

But in Malaysia, a politician’s personality, charisma and oratory skill is seen far more important regardless whether the leaders lies continuously unabated, as in the case of Anwar Ibrahim, who would have been politically dead if he would have done the same (Sept 16) in another country.

Anwar is more of a celebrity rather than a principled politician who would have resigned if he fails to fulfill his high profiled (and life changing to many) promises. Like celebrities, he has more fans than supporters. Fans are unlikely to shun their favourite celebrities even if the famed ones lies, take drugs, cheats and even murders someone, unlike political supporter who are likely to shun such characters and look at other prospective leaders.

So if Anwar says something stupid, like his comments linking Zaid’s outburst to certain article in Utusan Malaysia and summing it up as another conspiracy in the works , his fans are likely to forgive him. If he promises another Sept 16, many fans would still be around to support Anwar’s dream project.

I am at loss that Zaid Ibrahim and many PKR supporters realizes the man Anwar is only now, even though the numbers many be still small, for now. I am also at loss on DAP and PAS continued support for Anwar as a leader of Pakatan Rakyat despite the Sep 16 event and also never commented on continuous blunders, foolish and childish comments made by Anwar.

The fact that Anwar has never acknowledged various discrepancies, money politics and manipulations at even the initial PKR branch level elections only shows that Anwar is in denial that his own party and it’s elections are in a mess. He choses to blame Trojan horses, UMNO, saboteur etc and never admitted that the PKR HQ and Elections committee are incompetent to handle elections at such a scale.

I am privy to what happened at Hulu Selangor PKR elections where various devious methods and techniques were used to manipulate the outcome of the divisional elections. This involved a senior state EXCO man aligned to a deputy president candidate, who in my opinion outdid MIC politicians in terms of use of gangsters and polls manipulations. 2 Busloads of thugs were employed to help manipulate the votes in their favour. The vote counting were held until midnight and stopped after protests from various quarters.

Many local PKR supporters there, which have tripled further to Hulu Selangor by-elections, have openly said that they have never ever seen manipulations of local elections in such a large scale. Many would have by now, resigned and returned to BN.

The elections have now been withheld and there is no news on what actions would be taken by the PKR HQ. From what has been reported so far, there has not been any decision taken on all those cancelled, withheld and postponed branch level elections and PKR HQ saw it fit to continue with their national level elections.

Turnouts for all branch & national level elections have been extremely poor except for some miraculous turnouts reported in Sabah. PKR and Pakatan leaders used to goad BN on actual number of votes obtained by BN in general elections and by-elections saying BN does not command support from half of the electorates. Does a less than 10% voter’s turnout in PKR elections legitimize an election and its elected leaders?

Worse, the self appointed democratic icon of Malaysia himself is not democratically elected as the head of his own political party. Even PKR members are baffled with this and no one including the current PKR President has offered any explanation.

With all this democratic mess, some PKR leaders had the cheek to comment on Bersih 2.0 objectives.

PKR is certainly provides a 'new hope for Malaysia' and Malaysians had the opportunity of previewing the best electoral practises in any democracy, ever.