Hook up or split up, Pakatan needs to stop fooling around
The Malaysian Insider
Time’s up, Pakatan Rakyat. The days of courting are over. You either decide to get married or go your separate ways. Malaysians have grown weary of the soap opera which is being played out every week (or is it every other day) by different members of the opposition alliance.
Headlines such as “DAP pulls out of Kedah state government”, “Unity talks irk PAS partners” were once greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and accepted as necessary growing pains of a nascent political coalition trying to find its footing post-Election 2008.
This charitable position was anchored on the belief that in time, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and the Democratic Action Party (DAP) would check their egos at the door and cobble together a common platform for a better Malaysia.
Malaysians also wanted to know if the three political parties could reach common ground on their ideological positions.
Sadly, instead of working out the details and putting in place the architecture for a stronger, and permanent, Pakatan Rakyat, leaders from PKR, PAS and DAP have been squandering away the goodwill earned 16 months ago with petty politics and gamesmanship.
Sadly, instead of seizing a historic opportunity to show Malaysians that Pakatan Rakyat has medium- and long-term strategies for a better Malaysia, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang and Lim Kit Siang have been more focused on a Band Aid approach.
Driving this narrow-minded thinking is the underlying belief that if push comes to shove they can always return to their support base and secure the same support from Malaysians at the next general election.
So PAS can always count on conservative Malays, DAP on the Chinese and educated non-Malays and PKR on urban Malays. This argument is like a slice of Swiss cheese: full of holes.
