Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| Who's going to be our alternative PM? Posted: 20 Nov 2012 08:38 PM PST Under the Westminster-style political system, different political parties can forge an alliance and form the government, but then such an alliance must have an explicit shadow prime minister and a set of mutually agreed policies, which must be laid bare in front of the voters before the election. Tay Tian Yan, Sin Chew Daily Before a voter casts his ballot, he has to first find out what will happen after he drops the paper into the ballot box. No one is willing to cast his vote without a clear picture in his head, and then surrenders his fate to the Almighty. For example, if he is inclined to vote for Pakatan, he has to find out who will the Pakatan administration's prime minister be, if the opposition pact were to win the general election. Will he be Anwar Ibrahim or Hadi Awang? He also wants to know what Pakatan's core policies are. Is it going to go ahead with the hudud law? Unfortunately, Pakatan's leaders do not seem to visualise this. The PAS congress wanted Hadi to be the prime minister. Hadi said, "It doesn't really matter whether I am the prime minister or a fisherman." He somewhat changed his tone the following day, "The proposal is welcome. It's going to be awesome becoming the PM!" Whether he prefers to be a fisherman or PM, Hadi has to get his mind set. Well, to be a fisherman, Hadi has the whole boundless sea to himself but to be a PM, he will have the destiny of 28 million Malaysians tied to him, not a job that he should consider based on his mood or the 'feel good" factor. Lim Guan Eng meanwhile responded to the proposal: "DAP is not agreeable to the proposal. We want Anwar to be our PM." And then Anwar said, "I have no problem having Hadi as our PM." Someone concluded, "Let the leader of the party winning the most seats be the PM." So, DAP has the chance! Theoretically, a party that clinches more than 38 seats will easily become the biggest component in the Pakatan government. The choice of PM is not a small matter that anyone can trifle with. It will very much spell the destination of the voters' ballots, and most probably the future of Pakatan Rakyat. Anwar Ibrahim, Hadi Awang or Lim Kit Siang. To different voters, this couldn't have been a more difficult choice. If Anwar is chosen as the PM-in-waiting but then it is Hadi that later takes the helm, the consequences could be grave. In a similar manner, the implementation or non-implementation of hudud law could also be galaxies away for conservative Muslims, liberal Muslims and non-Muslims. Calls for hudud law resonated in the recent PAS congress. Hadi said, "The hudud law is never stalled. Everything will go according to democratic procedures." DAP rushed to put out the fire: "Stay calm! This is not going to happen!" This puts the voters in a dilemma. Hudud or no hudud, get the thing straight! It's better to get the true picture before the election than swallowing the consequences later. Moreover, with more and more non-Muslims now lending their support to the hudud law, there is no need for such secretiveness. For the sake of Pakatan Rakyat so that its alternative administration line-up would win the faith of voters, it is absolutely necessary for the opposition pact to get two things clear: Who is your choice of PM? Are your policies consistent and persistent? On top of that, Pakatan has to also make sure that it really has in place a comprehensive and binding mechanism to choose a capable and acceptable prime minister to implement open and moderate policies. Under the Westminster-style political system, different political parties can forge an alliance and form the government, but then such an alliance must have an explicit shadow prime minister and a set of mutually agreed policies, which must be laid bare in front of the voters before the election. This is the most fundamental obligation political parties or alliances have towards the voters.
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| Posted: 20 Nov 2012 11:24 AM PST
In observing the mood of the PAS delegates at the recent general assembly, one can't help but feel that if PAS were to do well in the polls, it would indeed demand for Hadi Awang to become the prime minister. And as I mentioned earlier, I suspect this is not something most supporters of PR, especially the non-Muslims and the progressive Muslims, would be comfortable with. Oon Yeoh, The Sun I'VE OFTEN said that Barisan Nasional is its own worst enemy. Time and again, it has shown a remarkable deftness in shooting own goals. But BN has no monopoly on damaging itself. Like BN, Pakatan Rakyat is often its own worst enemy. The issue that consistently trips it up is hudud. The scenario is familiar. Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad would challenge PAS on the issue of hudud. PAS spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz would declare it's the party's goal to implement hudud. DAP chairman Karpal Singh would say, "Over my dead body" or something to that effect. Meanwhile, PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim would dither and say something that's neither here nor there. The way this plays out over and over again, like a broken record, is farcical. And so, I expected to see another round of it during the 58th PAS Muktamar in Kota Baru. Surely, hudud is going to be the hot topic. But I was wrong. The big news is that PAS wants its president Hadi Awang to become the prime minister should Pakatan Rakyat win the general election. This caught everyone off guard because until then, nobody had ever mooted that notion. All along, it was generally assumed that PR's prime-minister-in-waiting was Anwar. This latest development could be cause for concern for non-Muslims and moderate Muslims alike, who until now threw their support behind PR because they assumed it would be led by Anwar. Would those same people vote for PR if the prospective prime minister is Hadi Awang? I've got no surveys to back me up on this but I'm pretty sure if Anwar was not available, such voters would much rather have Lim Guan Eng as prime minister. The thing is, DAP is not pushing for Lim to become the prime minister. Lim himself has said that he is "not qualified" to become prime minister, despite the fact that DAP has the biggest number of MPs in Parliament and that Lim is widely admired for his stewardship of Penang. If DAP is not pushing for its leader to helm the top spot in a PR government, why is PAS doing so? If the argument is that PAS is an absolutely critical component of PR, and that the coalition cannot possibly capture Putrajaya without it, the same can also be said of DAP and PKR. The truth is, all three parties need each other if they hope to take over the federal government. The answer quite simply, is that PAS has a tendency to become too big for its britches. It exhibited such behaviour after the 1999 General Election, where it did quite well, and now it's exhibiting such tendencies again. In observing the mood of the PAS delegates at the recent general assembly, one can't help but feel that if PAS were to do well in the polls, it would indeed demand for Hadi Awang to become the prime minister. And as I mentioned earlier, I suspect this is not something most supporters of PR, especially the non-Muslims and the progressive Muslims, would be comfortable with. In a scenario where PR wins the general election, the best configuration would be to have a similar kind of win ratio that the three parties currently have. That is, a situation where DAP has the most number of MPs, followed by PKR in second place and PAS third. That way, DAP, as the numerically-dominant party, can give way to PKR and support Anwar as the leader of the coalition (as it does now). Meanwhile, PAS, in third place, would not be in a position to insist that it should have everything its way. What about PKR as the dominant party, with DAP second and PAS third? That's still a better configuration than having PAS in the top position, but it would allow PKR to become overly dominant in much the way that Umno is dominant in the BN. Look at what has become of MCA and MIC in such a scenario. So, if PR were to win power, it should be with roughly the same ratio of MPs as is the case now otherwise those who voted for PR could be in for a rude shock.
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