Is Gerakan making a U-turn?
Raja Sara Petra
It was announced today that some Malays, a few ex-Umno members included, have joined Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia. This is what we call doing too little too late. The damage has already been done and was done a long time ago. It will take more than just a few new Malay members to improve the image of Gerakan, which has long been suffering from the lack of vision from its leaders.
Gerakan appears to be showing an interest in re-joining Barisan Nasional, or in joining Perikatan Nasional, after the mistake of leaving soon after GE14 in May 2018. Probably Gerakan thought Pakatan Harapan was going to be the government forever, which means Barisan Nasional no longer has any future in Malaysian politics.
Maybe Pakatan Harapan did win GE14. But it won the general election through fraud, deception and false promises. Even PPBM leader and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad loyalist, Rafidah Aziz, pointed out that Pakatan Harapan’s election manifesto was a work of fiction. It was a document meant merely to trick the voters into voting for Pakatan Harapan. And after they won the election they did a U-turn on every promise they made, except on the promise of abolishing the 6% GST.
But even the removal of the GST was a hoax because they replaced it with another form of tax that was even worse. So, in short, not a single promise was delivered and this is why Gerakan sees that their future is not with Pakatan Harapan, which is the reason they wish to return to Barisan Nasional or join Perikatan Nasional.
But for Gerakan to be accepted back, they must first rebrand themselves as a true multiracial party and not be seen as a clone or copycat of DAP, another hardcore Chinese party. Whenever the Gerakan leaders open their mouths, it is always about Chinese issues. How can Gerakan be seen as a multiracial party when they only champion Chinese issues?
In the latest PLI or poverty line index report, the poverty amongst the Bumiputera, Indian and Chinese communities stand at 7.2%, 4.8% and 1.4%, respectively. What are Gerakan’s plans to solve the poverty problem, which mainly affects the Bumiputeras? Opposing Jawi and championing Chinese education is not helping poor Malays. Maybe Gerakan needs to return to the drawing board and rethink their entire political strategy.
