THE CICAK.com

The Perak government’s difficult birth: Internal jostling over who should be menteri besar

By CHAN SHIJUN

The new Perak government seems to be having trouble trying to be born.

All this stems from a few odd factors. But I feel the main blame should squarely be put on the shoulders of the DAP-PKR-PAS coalition, the Barisan Rakyat (BR).

On the seat count, DAP won 18 seats, PKR 7 and PAS 6 out of the 59-seat state assembly, making BR’s having 31 seats in total. Of the remaining 28, UMNO has 27 and MCA 1. Barisan Nasional thus has 28 seats.

Through this perspective, the menteri besar of this state should come from DAP. However, the Perak constitution states that the menteri besar must be a Malay-Muslim, but this requirement can be waived by the Raja if he so wishes.

What happened then was that BR submitted 3 names to the Raja, one representative from each party. The Raja chose the rep from PAS. This decision has now caused some consternation among the federal DAP leaders.

As a result, the swearing-in of the new menteri besar was postponed. And to add further pain, it seems that PKR threatened to pull out of BR due to the exco seat allocations offered to it, which was 1 seat of out a 10 seats. State exco seats are the equivalent of state cabinet positions.

Where does the blame lie in this farce? I reckon squarely on the shoulders of all three BR leaders, but especially with the Peral and federal DAP.

However, I don’t think the bashing that Lim Kit Siang is getting is justified, especially by those who accused him through a racial angle. To me, this has nothing to do with race. Instead, it has to do with party ideology.

DAP is founded on secular social democratic principles. PAS on religious conservatism. In other democracies, these two parties would be on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, so the cooperation between DAP and PAS here is very unique.

But anyway, Lim was merely doing what his DAP supporters wanted him to do: Namely, how does BR Perak expect Lim and other DAP leaders to explain to its voters how they managed to get a PAS menteri besar after sending 18 DAP state assemblymen to the parliament?

What do you think will happen to these DAP assemblymen in the next election? MCA candidates will salivate for that day. There will probably be a DAP wipe-out in Perak IF the new Perak government shows even a whiff of Islamic conservatism. Tony Pua blogged on Lim’s predicament here.

One is justified to ask why did the Perak Raja choose the PAS rep?

It could be because the Raja really did think the PAS candidate was best qualified for the job in terms of experience, expertise, etc.

But perception is everything in politics, and having a PAS candidate as the menteri besar even though DAP would still be able to vet policy decisions would probably not go down well with the more diehard DAP supporters who voted for the party.

In reality though, this predicament could have been easily avoided by BR early on.

How? Through BR only submitting 2 names. One from DAP and one from PKR.

Internal BR discussion should first be done with all three parties and it should persuade PAS to refrain from submitting their representative. The rationale behind this is simple: DAP’s win was the basis for BR winning Perak. As such, it should have first bite at the menteri besar post.

If the Raja decides that the menteri besar has to be a Malay-Muslim, then the second choice from PKR should be the new menteri besar.

This way, DAP can explain to its supporters that it has tried, but the Raja didn’t allow it. It should also not get too much grief from this as it could explain to its supporters that PKR is also another secular, multiracial and multi-religious party and it should serve their interests well.

The Raja should have never been pulled into making this political decision. This was a great tactical mistake by BR.

Right now I’m not sure what’s happening. Ideally, if possible negotiations should be rebooted. A PKR candidate from a political viewpoint would be the best choice for the chief minister post.

But from the latest news it has been confirmed that PAS would indeed take the chief minister post.

Hopefully all three parties will set aside their differences now and work together to serve their bosses who hired them: namely, the Perak voters.

And on the exco allocation, DAP went overboard initially. Maybe partly due to its shock at PAS getting the chief minister post and its leader’s perceived need to take absolute control of the exco to nullify PAS’s power or whatever, it had tried to get 8 out of 10 seats.

Under ratio calculations using 18/31 x 10 = DAP should settle with 6 seats. PKR then should get 2 and PAS 2. Why the hell did DAP Perak suddenly insist on an 8-1-1 makeup I have no idea.

I chalked this up to governing and coalition inexperience on DAP’s part. Thankfully this has also been resolved now through compromises. The final exco allocations are 6 for DAP, 3 for PKR and 1 for PAS. Kudos to PAS for giving up one exco seat to PKR in return for BR agreeing to let it retain the CM post.

All in all, it is good to see that BR Perak has finally gotten its act together and ended their internal jostling. Here’s hoping that DAP-PKR-PAS’s newfound spirit of cooperation will continue to strengthen in the future and ultimately lead to BR being stable and capable enough to offer Malaysians a viable alternative federal government soon.

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CHAN SHIJUN is a contributing writer for theCICAK.

Shijun (aka sigma) is a social-democratic homo-sapien. Currently residing in Sydney, Australia, he is suffering from sambal withdrawal due to his inability to find any Down Under. Visit his site.