Wednesday, September 16, 2009

CAN PKR BE MENDED OR WILL IT SIMPLY BREAK APART?



With the newt-like metamorphosis of Anwar Ibrahim’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) encumbering the Pakatan Rakyat’s lurch for power, Lim Guan Eng’s hunch that the ground is no longer the same as it was under Pak Lah must be a strong hint that the DAP secretary-general has become illumined.

Guan Eng had said knocking off Najib Tun Razak from the helm would not be easy.

The PKR is breaking down. The recent crossover to Umno of the PKR Lunas assemblyman in Kedah and the recalcitrant Port Klang assemblyman in Selangor are obvious symptoms of the newt reaching maturity and must return to the mud and slush for it to spawn a fresh batch of larvae.

Guan Eng must have known there wasn’t and hasn’t been much in the PKR. It is mostly about Anwar, his secretaries and a few NGOs close to him, many of the rest picked from the streets without any character assessment.

Months after the Pakatan Perak state government was formed, two PKR State Executive Councilors were trapped suckling China dolls paid for by a contractor. As a consequence the government fell in disgrace.

The playtime of these PKR members in the lair of power did not stop there.

A personal tryst of another PKR State Executive Councilor rushed into the Internet a set of near-nude pictures a gory Gallum of the middle-world said was altogether alright in Islam.

Now a Kedah State Executive Councilor who is the assemblyman for Lunas has crossed court saying he has lost confidence in Anwar Ibrahim who is again facing a charge for sodomy.

What’s left for the PKR to use as a foundation to acquire public confidence is a mystery. After more than a year of coaching most of the party’s state executive and district councilors are said to be ineffective or utterly deadwoods

They are mainly members of NGO’s who are hardly acquainted with government or with any executive function.

Now suddenly propped with power they seem to believe that that power is well spent by attending meetings after meetings in a pretense of hard work. It is Anwar that is stuck and stumped in the up-shot.

While he and his team can win a significant number of seats in state assemblies and in parliament, delivery is yet to unfold into the tangible world.

The PKR, which may have started out well in Selangor with former Guthrie’s CEO, Khalid Ibrahim, leading the state government, is now looking frothy and fat.

The DAP too may be staring into space in Selangor where the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) investigations and the select committee on competency, accountability and transparency (Selcat)interrogations can reveal more graft-stubs and fund-pilfering graver than previously suspected.

In the Islamic landscape the Pas has run berserk with the party’s Selangor state commissioner, Hassan Ali, wishing to form mosque-based moral squads to nab beer from the shelves in Muslim-majority areas.

He seems enthralled by the Pahang Shariah Court judge who had slapped some Muslims who drank beer with a fine of RM5,000, six lashes of the whip and recently, with a year custodial sentence as well.

As Malaysia appears to be going religiously mad, the PKR’s Reformasi and Pakatan’s Civil Society are staying clear from the mental-waste.

Anwar and his PKR were strangely soft about the Pas’ war against beer.

When the powers-that-be decided to slam six Shah Alam demonstrators with sedition for parading a cow’s head and then stepping and spitting on it, the PKR quickly distanced itself from the deemed sacrilegious act to appease their members who are Hindus.

It will be the monkey that the PKR should next uphold as a sacred creature, the being associated in Hinduism with the god, Hanuman, and with Sun Wu Kung in Indo-Chinese beliefs.

What is the policy position of the Reformasi and of Civil Society concerning these bewildering developments involving beer and cattle? Anwar must elucidate or the whole of the Reformasi will have to be disregarded as merely a politically sopped maverick and hence, in Islam, as short-changing the people and therefore fraudulent (Mutafiffin).

The relevant Quranic verses run like this:

Woe to the cheaters,
Who, when taking the measures from the people, they take full measure,
But when they give the measure to the people they cheat.
Do they not expect to be resurrected?
--- Q. 83: 1 – 4

The PKR may be resurrected as a newt given its sidestepping of issues relating to the religious mental-waste.

The newt lives through a three-stage metamorphosis – a creature born in mud and slush that lives on dry land as a juvenile and then back to the mud and slush in its maturity.

As for the cow, is it really sacred to the Hindus or is it merely taboo to a large number of them? Haven’t you seen Indian cowherds whipping cattle? --- a. ghani ismail (16 Sept. 2009)