It never creases to amaze me how politicians in this country can get away with anything. Not only do they contradict themselves on a daily basis, their hypocrisy is mind-boogling.
Take for instance the word “democracy”. All politicians I know swears that they are for democracy and some even say they will defend it with their blood. Unfortunately in Malaysia, democracy does not mean “democracy” as most people think. In Malaysia, democracy means hypocrisy and double or even triple-talk.
The best example of this “democracy” at work is party elections. Every time there is a party election, the leader will say this is democracy at “work”.
Before you can even blink, they will also say the “party” has “decided” that “no contest for the top posts” is the best way for party elections. So definition number one: democracy means no elections for top posts.
Then, when a challenger emerges, its back to democracy at “work”. This means the leader will use all sorts of presidential power to ensure that there is no such thing as a fair fight. If the challenger has more than an even chance to win, then the challenger is immediately packed off to the disciplinary committee for one or more of the following. All based on recent cases — take your pick:
1) “destroying the credibility of XXX’s elections”
2) “tarnishing the party’s image”
3) “money politics”
4) “sabotaging the party during the elections”
It is as if going after the top job is a regarded as a capital sin nowadays. It is as if one can only lawan towkay if one is willing to be kicked out of a party. There does not appear to be any other way.
Malaysians politicians have a mentality that it’s a winner-take-all situation. The moment you lose, you are out, forever.
The good news of course is that since the public is so forgiving and have a short memory, you can move to another party without much difficulty. This appears to be the most popular route for MCA leaders.
Lim Chong Eu was the president of MCA before he jumped and became the leader of Gerakan. Lim Kheng Yaik, then a young turk who was planning to challenge the old guard in MCA, was kicked out of MCA but he end up as leader of Gerakan and one of the longest serving member of the cabinet. Tengku Razaleigh who lost narrowly to Mahathir in the 1987 Umno polls, left the party and established Parti Semangat 46. In the Democratic Action Party (DAP), the people behind the KOKS, Knock-out Kit Siang or Knock-out Karpal Singh, have all left the party. One of the most prominent members of KOKS, Wee Choo Keong, is now a MP for PKR. The irony of course is that when Wee was forced out DAP he actually established a new party, Malaysian Democratic Party (MDP). MDP obviously was not selling so PKR.
Over in Sarawak, Leo Moggie and Daniel Tajang who challenged James Wong for Sarawak National Party (SNAP) ended up forming a new party, Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS). Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) and Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) were all created by challengers to the existing leader.
I agree that this sort of thing happens all over the world but in Asia and Malaysia its so vicious that one could almost say that our level of political development is still stuck in the Stone Age. A modern political party must embrace differences in opinion but in Malaysia political leaders regard themselves as God. A God must not be challenged and all those who challenge God must be struck down by lighting and banish forever. This may explain why people will do anything to be God and once they become God, only the real God can remove them.
One way out of this mess is to impose term limit. I cannot think of another way to limit the damage done by these little Gods on the Malaysian political system. The good news is that the younger generation no longer tolerates these Malaysian Gods and their nonsense. Hence I am willing to bet that the recent actions against Chua (MCA) and Subra (MIC) will ultimately lead to unhappy endings for the incumbent presidents of MCA and MIC. Malaysian Gods are not as powerful as before!
James Chin is a Malaysian academic. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of institutions he is associated with.
Showing posts with label Gerakan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gerakan. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Monday, June 09, 2008
Gerakan - The time is now
Barisan Nasional is coalition of many independent parties. Some are raced-based, like Umno, MCA, and MIC. Some are supposed to be multiracial, like Gerakan, PPP and most of the parties in Sarawak and Sabah. It is, in fact, a loose coalition. There is no BN constitution or a common ideology governing the coalition. Each component party has its own constitution which lays out how each party is to be run, disciplinary matters regarding each party, membership, party elections and so on. Each party also has its own ideology.For example, Gerakan’s ideology is to fight for a fair and equal society in a non-racial manner, whereas the race-based parties stress on the protection of the rights of the race the party represents. For example, Umno will fight for the rights of the Malays and MCA that of the Chinese and MIC that of the Indians. The membership and structure of each party is also very different. So it is quite correct to say that BN is a loose coalition and is not a single party.
Because of this, disciplinary matters are left to the individual party. Gerakan has its own disciplinary Board. MCA has its own and Umno has its own. Umno’s disciplinary board cannot interfere with the disciplinary matters of Gerakan, and Gerakan’s cannot interfere with disciplinary matters of MCA. The rules are supposed to be clear cut, so that theoretically, there should be no interference of one party into the affairs of another party.
However, in practice, one party is above all others, and that is Umno. Umno extends hegemony over all the others so much so a former president of Gerakan, in a recent interview, said that all the component parties are like ‘beggars’. Coming from the mouth of a former president of a component party and a former minister for over two decades, this cannot be wrong even though the grassroots of the component parties were never told of this before.
What was often told to the grassroots by leaders of these parties was that the leaders of these parties are ‘fighting very hard’ at BN council meetings or the cabinet, but nothing was said of the ‘begging’ inside BN council meetings or in the cabinet. Grassroots were also often told that all component parties are basically equal.
Gerakan’s Lee Kah Choon who was roped in by the new Penang government to help bring investments to Penang and offered a directorship of the Penang Development Corporation (PDC). This is a position like that of a civil service, and Lee’s acceptance was in no way hurting Gerakan. We must realise a politician’s first loyalty should be to the people. If by taking up the directorship of PDC (which is not a political appointment), Lee is able to contribute to the development of Penang, then no one should stop him from doing so. Sometimes, politicians must be prepared to go above partisan politics.
He was, however, forced to resign because after he announced his acceptance, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak immediately asked what Gerakan was going to do in Lee’s case. The rest is, of course, history with the Gerakan leadership issuing him a show cause letter with Lee chosing to quit the party rather than to play politics and reply.
Another case then arose involving Dr Tan Kee Kwong, who is the Gerakan Kuala Lumpur chairperson. He was invited to be the co-chairperson of a task force to oversee land matters in Selangor. This is an administrative position, again like that of a civil service. This position would have enabled him to tackle the problems faced by land owners in Selangor and increase the efficiency of the land offices, which will translate into a saving of time and money for the land- owning raykat. There will be thousands and thousands of beneficiaries if land offices can be made more efficient.
So, who will benefit? The people will benefit. Even the non-land owners will benefit because whatever cost that can be saved can be channeled to development of the state. Political parties exist because of the people. Without the people, there is no party. This is the most basic fact. So in helping to chair a task force which can help thousands of people solve their headaches and nightmares regarding land matters, why should disciplinary action be taken against Tan? Why can’t leaders of political parties be less partisan and work more for the people?
Gerakan leaders have publicly stated that they would go back to basics and go back to the people. Well, this is the best opportunity, in fact, to prove to the people that they are going back to the people by allowing their members to hold non-political administrative positions to help the people. To do otherwise will give a perception that the promise to go back to the people is only lip service. The first person to ask that action be taken against Tan is not from Gerakan but from outside Gerakan and he is Najib, the deputy president of Umno. If you have understood the setup of BN, then you will know that all parties are supposed to be equal and each party is supposed to ‘take care’ of its own members.
What has Umno got to do with Gerakan? This is an internal affair of Gerakan. Gerakan has its own set of leaders, its own set of rules and regulations, its own constitution, and its own disciplinary board. The party is big enough to take care of its own problems and its members. Why should Umno once again show its hegemonic streak in asking a non-Umno member to resign from his own party, when it is none of Umno’s business?
The last election saw the trend of the people abandoning Gerakan and voting for Pakatan Rakyat, mainly because of the perception that a vote for Gerakan or MCA is a vote for Umno. Is this perception really true? Gerakan leaders often tell their grassroots that they fight at BN council meetings and in the cabinet for the people’s interest and that a vote for Gerakan does not translate into a vote for Umno. However, by immediately issuing show cause letters in both Lee’s and Tan’s cases after Najib commented, they have inadvertently confirmed the perception that a vote for Gerakan is indeed a vote for Umno and that Umno is still dictating the terms to Gerakan. This is one of the main reasons the party lost so badly in the recent general election.
The party wants to reform, but reform starts with action and not from the lips. No amount of brainstorming or paying lip service to reform will endear the party to the people again. This perception that Gerakan is doing Umno’s bidding has to be gotten rid of. How to get rid of this perception? One way is to leave BN and be an own independent third force with the party supporting good policies of either Pakatan or BN, and criticising the bad policies of either coalition.
But the party leadership apparently is not ready to make this jump. Okay. That will leave them the second option - stand up to Umno and tell them to mind their own business. Stand up to them and say Gerakan is truly for the people and supports whatever is good for the people. It will not take action against members working for the benefit of the people. Only by standing up to Umno and showing the stuff that Gerakan is made of will the perception that a vote for Gerakan is a vote for Umno be changed.
What is the risk? I don’t see any risk at all BN cannot afford to kick Gerakan out because that would mean losing critical support when Anwar is threatening to entice 30 MPs to cross over. In fact by standing up to Umno and exerting its own right as an equal partner to Umno it can endear itself to the people once again and prove that this party is indeed keen to go back to the people, to go back to its ideology and go back to its grassroots.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Gerakan: the decadence of an idealist party
Gerakan acting president Dr Koh Tsu Koon finally acts tough.
After a briefing with the party’s central delegates last Sunday, Tsu Koon told the press "certain Umno leaders’ deeds, words and actions in the past two years have resulted in a feeling of resentment".
No one should be surprised at Tsu Koon's assessment. What is truly puzzling is that the former Penang chief minister only realised this after Gerakan suffered a crushing defeat on March 8.
Would it have been different had the Penang-based party chosen to speak out fearlessly when Khairy Jamaluddin and Hishammuddin Hussein indulged themselves in racist remarks and gestures at the Umno general assemblies?
Hardly.
Gerakan’s ignominious rout was already in the making before the March election. As I wrote a few months ago, my advice for some party faithful to contemplate a withdrawal from the rotten Barisan Nasional coalition to preserve their dignity went unheeded. With the benefit of hindsight, even a last minute pullout by Gerakan, as what had happened to Parti Bersatu Sabah on the eve of the 1990 election, would not have saved the party from the electoral massacre.
Tsu Koon was willy-nilly over the choice of his successor as chief minister, and it irked the Penang voters. Worse, in passing the ball to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he was being utterly insensitive to their anger, which only reinforced the impression of him serving as Umno stooge.
The Penangites could not care less if it was the wishy-washy Chia Kwang Chye, the dreary Lee Kah Choon, the seasoned Teng Hock Nam, or even the young and articulate Teng Chang Yeow, as they had decided to do an "all change" and vote all of them out.
Pretty much like what the Australian voters did to John Howard last November, the voters had to decide for Tsu Koon since he could not make up his own mind. I salute the Penangites for their boleh spirit and discernment that Malaysia as a nation of sheep had begotten a government of wolves.
For idealists, elite socialists
Still, I could not help feeling sorry. In 1968, Gerakan was founded on the firm basis of multiracialism, with stalwart intellectuals like the late Syed Hussein Alatas and Wang Gungwu among its top leaders. Dr. J B Peter and Madam Ganga Nair were there too. Dr Tan Chee Khoon, latterly Mr Opposition, even ditched the Labour Party and joined Gerakan, which was almost a natural home for idealists and elite socialists at the time.
Also in 1968, Dr Seenivasegam of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) presided over a public debate on Malaysian Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur between representatives from Gerakan and the Democratic Action Party (DAP). Those were the days when ideologues held sway.
The electoral debut of the still fledgling party could not have been more splendid, as it went on to capture Penang in the 1969 election. Who says ideology never matters in Malaysian politics?
But who could have foreseen a party that once offered so much hope for multiracial politics in the deeply racialised and divided nation of Malaysia would later become a spent force?
Today, Gerakan can only showcase second rate politicians like Mah Siew Keong, the youth leader whose waving of the Basic Foundations of our Nationhood as a clumsy protest over the keris-brandishing of his Umno counterparts was a joke.
Or what about a political dwarf in Lim Si Pin, son of the former Gerakan president Dr Lim Keng Yaik, who would not even take up the challenge for a minor debate in public? It is certainly not an unlucky coincidence that both Mah and Lim Jr. lost in the election.
To be fair, Gerakan’s betrayal of its multiracial roots did not begin with Keng Yaik, who was party president for more than 25 years. But it was under Lim that the party’s loss of multiracial outlook became most marked.
A populist, Lim had no time for polemics and was disdainful of intellectuals. Under his leadership, Gerakan became ideologically vacuous, and behaved increasingly like Umno’s lieutenant. When Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared Malaysia an Islamic state at the Gerakan general assembly in September 2001, Lim did not even raise an eyebrow.
Because Lim was beholden first to Mahathir and then to Abdullah, his party’s response to communal and religious controversies was paltry at best. In the state constituency of Bukit Gasing that is made up of sizeable populations of Catholics and Christians, former Gerakan assemblyman Lim Thuan Seng was conspicuously silent on many religious issues.
Under the BN’s kidnap-style control that hardly tolerates even a semblance of critique, few can escape unscathed for speaking their own mind, just look at Zaid Ibrahim of Umno, Sothinathan of the MIC and Loh Seng Kok of the MCA.
Keng Yaik - a MCA reject
That Keng Yaik is bereft of democratic beliefs can be seen from his desperate but failed attempt to save his son’s campaign in the Batu parliamentary seat recently. Knowing that Lim Si Pin could lose, Lim resorted to relentless personal attacks on Tian Chua, the PKR candidate. It backfired and his son lost big.
Even in Beruas, which Keng Yaik represented for over 20 years, his political protege Chang Ko Youn was defeated by Ngeh Koo Ham of the DAP. When campaigning for Gerakan heavyweight Teo Kok Chee in the state assembly constituency of Skudai, Johor, Lim assured the audience Teo was "Abdul Ghani’s godson" and Skudai would receive special attention from the menteri besar. Too bad, that the voters punished Lim’s tawdriness with a stunning victory for Boo Cheng Hau, another DAP state leader - a majority of 12,854 votes.
Keng Yaik might have been able to fool mainstream journalists with his tasteless jokes and entertain them with his hearty laughs, his "glories" are fading fast nonetheless.
Not only has Gerakan lost the will to harness Umno, the party has also become "sinicized" over the years. For all the fanfare and pomp at his retirement last year, Keng Yaik is in fact an MCA reject. Kicked out of the Chinese party by Tan Siew Sin in 1973, Keng Yaik brought the mavericks – including Paul Leong Khee Seong - into Gerakan and continued his battle with his enemies in the MCA.
As Gerakan leader, Keng Yaik effectively turned Gerakan into a Chinese chauvinist party. In December 2003, he openly thanked Abdullah for giving his blessing to a future merger between Gerakan and the MCA, and vowed to do his part to persuade those who had reservations about the proposal. His blatant disregard of the non-Chinese grassroots was bordering on arrogance.
Tsu Koon’s multiethnic credentials are equally questionable. Last December, Dr. Toh Kin Woon and S Paranjothy, a Gerakan Youth leader, both lent their support to Hindraf’s demands. Tsu Koon defended Toh’s remarks as a personal opinion, but referred Paranjothy to the party’s disciplinary committee for further action.
The fact was, Paranjothy had openly chastised Umno Youth leaders, putting Tsu Koon in a difficult position. Paranjothy’s fate clearly indicates that Gerakan can no longer represent the interests of the non-Chinese; it also reveals the home truth that the party exists at Umno’s mercy.
If not for the series of evil laws that curtail media freedom, coupled with the habitual manipulation of the electoral system by the government, the myth of Gerakan as the BN’s conscience would have been busted long ago. Throughout the 13-day campaign, Lim and Koh launched one personal attack after another against Anwar Ibrahim, but the biggest irony is that PKR is now much more genuinely multiracial than Gerakan, winning support from voters of all walks of life!
Even Dr Toh, for decades a conscientious voice in Gerakan, concedes the party had lost its multiracial identity when all its candidates fielded for the recent election were Chinese.
Meanwhile, DAP has been successful in garnering enough non-Chinese votes to come to power in Penang. Should Lim Guan Eng perform well, the feeble argument that only a Penangite could ensure effective governance in the state will be proven wrong.
Localness, after all, is the last refuge of an ambitious but brainless politician.
Return to what ideology?
Tsu Koon has also said his party will not be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Instead, there is a lot of soul-searching and self-criticism awaiting the rank and file, as well as the need to "go back to the basics of our ideology".
Very fine and well. But what ideology does the acting president have in mind? Despite Gerakan’s claim to social democracy, I only know Keng Yaik was among the most capitalist-minded cabinet ministers, a torchbearer of the BN’s neo-liberal agenda who could not cease salivating at lucrative privatisation deals.
And guess what? A click on the word "ideology" on the party’s website returns nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I am curious to know what would Syed Hussein Alatas and Tan Chee Koon have to say on this six feet under?
Lest we forget, Gerakan and PPP were at each other’s throat over the right to contest in the Taiping parliamentary constituency. M Kayveas won the battle but lost the war; his political future now hangs in a balance.
But Gerakan is certainly not the one having the last laugh, for who knows the once great promising and idealist party, should it continue to be subservient to the racist and domineering Umno, will not suffer the fate of PPP in the not too distant future?
Malaysiakini
After a briefing with the party’s central delegates last Sunday, Tsu Koon told the press "certain Umno leaders’ deeds, words and actions in the past two years have resulted in a feeling of resentment".
No one should be surprised at Tsu Koon's assessment. What is truly puzzling is that the former Penang chief minister only realised this after Gerakan suffered a crushing defeat on March 8.
Would it have been different had the Penang-based party chosen to speak out fearlessly when Khairy Jamaluddin and Hishammuddin Hussein indulged themselves in racist remarks and gestures at the Umno general assemblies?
Hardly.
Gerakan’s ignominious rout was already in the making before the March election. As I wrote a few months ago, my advice for some party faithful to contemplate a withdrawal from the rotten Barisan Nasional coalition to preserve their dignity went unheeded. With the benefit of hindsight, even a last minute pullout by Gerakan, as what had happened to Parti Bersatu Sabah on the eve of the 1990 election, would not have saved the party from the electoral massacre.
Tsu Koon was willy-nilly over the choice of his successor as chief minister, and it irked the Penang voters. Worse, in passing the ball to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he was being utterly insensitive to their anger, which only reinforced the impression of him serving as Umno stooge.
The Penangites could not care less if it was the wishy-washy Chia Kwang Chye, the dreary Lee Kah Choon, the seasoned Teng Hock Nam, or even the young and articulate Teng Chang Yeow, as they had decided to do an "all change" and vote all of them out.
Pretty much like what the Australian voters did to John Howard last November, the voters had to decide for Tsu Koon since he could not make up his own mind. I salute the Penangites for their boleh spirit and discernment that Malaysia as a nation of sheep had begotten a government of wolves.
For idealists, elite socialists
Still, I could not help feeling sorry. In 1968, Gerakan was founded on the firm basis of multiracialism, with stalwart intellectuals like the late Syed Hussein Alatas and Wang Gungwu among its top leaders. Dr. J B Peter and Madam Ganga Nair were there too. Dr Tan Chee Khoon, latterly Mr Opposition, even ditched the Labour Party and joined Gerakan, which was almost a natural home for idealists and elite socialists at the time.
Also in 1968, Dr Seenivasegam of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) presided over a public debate on Malaysian Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur between representatives from Gerakan and the Democratic Action Party (DAP). Those were the days when ideologues held sway.
The electoral debut of the still fledgling party could not have been more splendid, as it went on to capture Penang in the 1969 election. Who says ideology never matters in Malaysian politics?
But who could have foreseen a party that once offered so much hope for multiracial politics in the deeply racialised and divided nation of Malaysia would later become a spent force?
Today, Gerakan can only showcase second rate politicians like Mah Siew Keong, the youth leader whose waving of the Basic Foundations of our Nationhood as a clumsy protest over the keris-brandishing of his Umno counterparts was a joke.
Or what about a political dwarf in Lim Si Pin, son of the former Gerakan president Dr Lim Keng Yaik, who would not even take up the challenge for a minor debate in public? It is certainly not an unlucky coincidence that both Mah and Lim Jr. lost in the election.
To be fair, Gerakan’s betrayal of its multiracial roots did not begin with Keng Yaik, who was party president for more than 25 years. But it was under Lim that the party’s loss of multiracial outlook became most marked.
A populist, Lim had no time for polemics and was disdainful of intellectuals. Under his leadership, Gerakan became ideologically vacuous, and behaved increasingly like Umno’s lieutenant. When Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared Malaysia an Islamic state at the Gerakan general assembly in September 2001, Lim did not even raise an eyebrow.
Because Lim was beholden first to Mahathir and then to Abdullah, his party’s response to communal and religious controversies was paltry at best. In the state constituency of Bukit Gasing that is made up of sizeable populations of Catholics and Christians, former Gerakan assemblyman Lim Thuan Seng was conspicuously silent on many religious issues.
Under the BN’s kidnap-style control that hardly tolerates even a semblance of critique, few can escape unscathed for speaking their own mind, just look at Zaid Ibrahim of Umno, Sothinathan of the MIC and Loh Seng Kok of the MCA.
Keng Yaik - a MCA reject
That Keng Yaik is bereft of democratic beliefs can be seen from his desperate but failed attempt to save his son’s campaign in the Batu parliamentary seat recently. Knowing that Lim Si Pin could lose, Lim resorted to relentless personal attacks on Tian Chua, the PKR candidate. It backfired and his son lost big.
Even in Beruas, which Keng Yaik represented for over 20 years, his political protege Chang Ko Youn was defeated by Ngeh Koo Ham of the DAP. When campaigning for Gerakan heavyweight Teo Kok Chee in the state assembly constituency of Skudai, Johor, Lim assured the audience Teo was "Abdul Ghani’s godson" and Skudai would receive special attention from the menteri besar. Too bad, that the voters punished Lim’s tawdriness with a stunning victory for Boo Cheng Hau, another DAP state leader - a majority of 12,854 votes.
Keng Yaik might have been able to fool mainstream journalists with his tasteless jokes and entertain them with his hearty laughs, his "glories" are fading fast nonetheless.
Not only has Gerakan lost the will to harness Umno, the party has also become "sinicized" over the years. For all the fanfare and pomp at his retirement last year, Keng Yaik is in fact an MCA reject. Kicked out of the Chinese party by Tan Siew Sin in 1973, Keng Yaik brought the mavericks – including Paul Leong Khee Seong - into Gerakan and continued his battle with his enemies in the MCA.
As Gerakan leader, Keng Yaik effectively turned Gerakan into a Chinese chauvinist party. In December 2003, he openly thanked Abdullah for giving his blessing to a future merger between Gerakan and the MCA, and vowed to do his part to persuade those who had reservations about the proposal. His blatant disregard of the non-Chinese grassroots was bordering on arrogance.
Tsu Koon’s multiethnic credentials are equally questionable. Last December, Dr. Toh Kin Woon and S Paranjothy, a Gerakan Youth leader, both lent their support to Hindraf’s demands. Tsu Koon defended Toh’s remarks as a personal opinion, but referred Paranjothy to the party’s disciplinary committee for further action.
The fact was, Paranjothy had openly chastised Umno Youth leaders, putting Tsu Koon in a difficult position. Paranjothy’s fate clearly indicates that Gerakan can no longer represent the interests of the non-Chinese; it also reveals the home truth that the party exists at Umno’s mercy.
If not for the series of evil laws that curtail media freedom, coupled with the habitual manipulation of the electoral system by the government, the myth of Gerakan as the BN’s conscience would have been busted long ago. Throughout the 13-day campaign, Lim and Koh launched one personal attack after another against Anwar Ibrahim, but the biggest irony is that PKR is now much more genuinely multiracial than Gerakan, winning support from voters of all walks of life!
Even Dr Toh, for decades a conscientious voice in Gerakan, concedes the party had lost its multiracial identity when all its candidates fielded for the recent election were Chinese.
Meanwhile, DAP has been successful in garnering enough non-Chinese votes to come to power in Penang. Should Lim Guan Eng perform well, the feeble argument that only a Penangite could ensure effective governance in the state will be proven wrong.
Localness, after all, is the last refuge of an ambitious but brainless politician.
Return to what ideology?
Tsu Koon has also said his party will not be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Instead, there is a lot of soul-searching and self-criticism awaiting the rank and file, as well as the need to "go back to the basics of our ideology".
Very fine and well. But what ideology does the acting president have in mind? Despite Gerakan’s claim to social democracy, I only know Keng Yaik was among the most capitalist-minded cabinet ministers, a torchbearer of the BN’s neo-liberal agenda who could not cease salivating at lucrative privatisation deals.
And guess what? A click on the word "ideology" on the party’s website returns nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I am curious to know what would Syed Hussein Alatas and Tan Chee Koon have to say on this six feet under?
Lest we forget, Gerakan and PPP were at each other’s throat over the right to contest in the Taiping parliamentary constituency. M Kayveas won the battle but lost the war; his political future now hangs in a balance.
But Gerakan is certainly not the one having the last laugh, for who knows the once great promising and idealist party, should it continue to be subservient to the racist and domineering Umno, will not suffer the fate of PPP in the not too distant future?
Malaysiakini
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