|
By Shannon Teoh, The Malaysian Insider Pakatan Rakyat (PR) is learning the hard way that mere speeches do not a successful coalition make.
It was riding high on the crest of Tuesday night’s rally where leaders of all three parties were cheered on as they thumped their chests in asserting their commitment to the fledgling alliance despite the recent unity government “crisis”. Less than 24 hours later, the Indians in Penang were calling for DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng to resign as chief minister, DAP had pulled out of the Kedah state government and DAP and PKR were at odds over the second bridge in Penang. And let's not forget the small matter of the Umno-PAS unity government proposal that just will not go away. This time it is the two respective Youth wings which are reported to be flirting with "intellectual discourse". Today, the PR leadership will hold council in an emergency 1pm meeting in Parliament. Officially, it is to discuss the much-delayed forming of shadow Cabinet committees but it would be foolish to believe they will not — and foolish for them not to — seek solutions to the current mountain of problems. Just last week, PR finally came to an agreement to reject a unity government with Barisan Nasional. This was an attempt to set aside the idea which was raised at the PAS general assembly, an idea which had caused what DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang called a "crisis of confidence" for the entire month of June. But the rift over the unity talks is clearly not over. Sources say a recent article by PAS central committee member Dzulkefly Ahmad on the unity government proposal in party organ Harakah led to secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali stopping the press after 40,000 copies had been printed. The piece, which opinion differed with PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang who first mooted the idea, was also pulled from the web edition by pro-unity Mustafa. One wonders what Kit Siang will call the current scenario and if he will be reminded of the failed Barisan Alternatif alliance that DAP eventually pulled out of in 2001 due to PAS's insistence on its Islamic state agenda which had caused major losses for DAP in the 1999 general election. READ MORE HERE: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/
 |
News & Commentaries 
Let's us go all the way - bring back the British, DUtch and Portugese while we are at it to bring back "good governance"