END OF PAKATAN RAKYAT GOVERNMENT IN PERAK

Perak’s delirious power-tussle is over but it should be worth remembering morale in Umno was at its ebb when Bota Assemblyman, Nasarudin Hashim, leapfrogged to Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) on 25 January.

The injury came eight days after the BN failed to retain Kuala Terengganu in the by-election on 17 January.

The scenario was showing the BN’s impending doom when in a sudden change of monsoons a circus of errors ensued in Perak’s Pakatan Rakyat.

Instead of four from Umno joining the PKR and boosting the lean majority of the Pakatan, or so we were told, the twisted for-tune brought two from the PKR and one from the DAP to the side of the BN, giving the coalition a majority of three in the state assembly of 59.

The Pakatan’s fledgling government in the state flipped into a flop on February 4 after the trio resigned from their positions in the state government.

It was all over by the next day. Perak Pakatan Menteri Besar (Chief Minister), Mohamad Nizar Jamaluddin, refusing to resign along with his Exco, is merely an episode of the ensuing idiosyncracies of the circus, unless of course he wants an emergency declared in Perak like in Sarawak (1966) and in Kelantan (1978).

But that is unlikely.

The public enchantment is now with the former Pakatan trio who had become king-makers, two going to court soon for accepting sexual gratification by the largesse of a very virtuous businessman.

In the wake of the stupendous series of events the Perak Umno liaisons chief and former Menteri Besar, Tajol Rosli, took the blame for Nasarudin’s big leap.

He resigned, but Nasarudin is back in Umno.

When Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, took over from Tajol it was widely believed the Pakatan would quickly dissolve the state assembly, leading to Najib’s Waterloo.

Najib, already injured for leading the wasted campaign in Kuala Terengganu would be fatally wounded should he lead the BN in a statewide poll in Perak and the BN loses again.

It was touch-and-go for Umno less than a week before. Three other Umno assemblymen were already counted out before the winds suddenly changed course.

Then moods turned inside out, casting Pakatan members from the brief glory to irrecoverable gloom.

In the Internet bloggers sympathetic to the Pakatan mumbled distressingly, condemning the crossovers and clamoring for a state re-election.

But it was their own leader who had been screaming since the 8 March general elections last year for BN law-makers to frog-leap to the PKR so he could be Prime Minister.

Anwar Ibrahim has been telling the world enough BN members would bail out and join PKR to give him power before September 16, 2008, a miserable miscalculation that has already cost him enough and will, indeed, make him pay even more.

The poor man is now facing another charge of sodomy, the case on-going with little public attention.

It is simple to see it is Anwar and his “mind game” that is the biggest casualty of this Pakatan’s circus of errors. He is indispensable in the imaging of the Pakatan as an alternative to the BN.

With Anwar cruelly self-mangled, the PKR cannot make meaning, being as it were, merely Anwar’s vehicle that has been pawning Civil Society and the Asian Renaissance for small political gains.

The PKR and Pakatan are doing badly, some members going on an anti-Malay and anti-Islam spree to draw non-Malay support.

Anwar is apparently unable to exercise effective control over the abuse.

A wild-boar head was found atop the gate of a national school in Malacca and the head of a pig was placed in a mosque at the University of Malaya.

There had been land-grabs in Perak benefiting Chinese, a thrust for Chinese support by the eleven months old Pakatan state government, its hand plunged into the loot before outgrowing its infancy.

The bloggers craving for state re-election in Perak should stop dreaming that the Pakatan will come up with a greater victory. The scenario has altered.

A lot of Pakatan members have successfully driven themselves once again into the gutters. Even if the mood is not as good for the BN as it was in 2004, the March 8 Gloriosa has withered on the vine and the Pakatan sages have become sick.

Six million young voters would be voting from a total of 16.9 million in the next general elections. Had Anwar and the rest of the Pakatan been conducting themselves soberly, almost all observers agree it is the Pakatan that should be forming the next federal government.

That thought is now looking like a grim fairy-tale.

The BN would need only a strong Social Policy and a Corruption Clean-Up to regain the people’s trust and make a strong comeback in Perak.

In Perak BN’s Dr. Zambry Abdul Kadir is now Menteri Besar. He has a proven record of efficient leadership.----a. ghani ismail, 6 February 2009