KUALA LUMPUR, July 2 — 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.
The circumstances from then seem to be mirrored in Kedah, where the state leadership has unanimously voted to quit the coalition government over the issue of a demolition of a pig abattoir.
Despite chairman Thomas Su's protests that it is not an ethnic issue, he admits that problems with the PAS-led administration have been there from the outset, including Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Azizan Abdul Razak's call for a 50 per cent housing quota for Bumiputeras last year.
It would be naive not to see the ideological and political differences between the secularist DAP and Islamist PAS once again becoming a crucial obstacle to the coalition's progress.
DAP may also not take too kindly to PKR's sudden "heavy involvement" in Penang.
The demolition — albeit delayed until August — of an Indian village in Penang has not only drawn expected flak from outlawed Indian lobby group Hindraf, an important ally during the March 2008 general election, but also PKR's Balik Pulau MP Yusmadi Yusoff who called on the DAP-led government to solve the issue and prove that it advocated accountability.
PKR's new bridge opposition mooted by de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim also drew a confused response from Guan Eng who said he was in fact agreeable to the existing plan as long as it went ahead.
This follows on a recent spat between PKR and DAP over the appointment of the Seberang Prai municipal council president Mokhtar Mohd Jait, where PKR's local councillors had boycotted his swearing in. It has led to state PKR whip Johari Kassim being sacked from his own councillor post for leading the boycott.
PR may attempt to brush these incidences off as minor tiffs as they have done in the past. The usual answers like "allowing freedom of expression" and "being open to discussion" may hold some weight if the alliance did not also at the same time try to cover up many of these issues.
Today's meeting may sort out many of these outstanding problems but probably not the fundamental differences and discord between the partners.
If pork can cause a partner to quit in Kedah, who is to say alcohol sale will not eventually do the same in Selangor?
In the time since the last general election, PR may claim to have swung more voters its way but in the meantime its own party members defected, causing the loss of the Perak government while bickering continues in its other state governments, save the PAS stronghold of Kelantan.
DAP information chief Tony Pua stated online today of the Umno-PAS Youth wings resurrection of unity talks: "Some incredibly politically naive youth chief isn't really qualified for intellectual discourse."
The same might be said of PR's attempts to paper over cracks in its "united front." If in the beginning it was clearly defined issues — Kit Siang even made a rare apology for threatening a DAP boycott of PAS's Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin as Perak MB — that were the causes of dissent, today these are not so black and white anymore with grassroots leaders of all three parties claiming they are in the right.
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