“Ibrahim (Ali) is like a parasite, hopping from tree to tree to cari makan (make a living). Whichever tree he is on will somehow die and then he will flutter on to the next,” Wan Rahim said.
Wong Choon Mei, Harakah Daily
PAS will not field Ibrahim Ali, the Perkasa chief who has become notorious for his outlandish and ultra-racist remarks, in the next general election, party leaders said.
“We have known him for a long time. He is most annoying, even irritating but he is just a tin kosong (empty vessel) although people nowadays see him as dangerous to society because of his racist remarks,” Wan Rahim Wan Abdullah, PAS MP for Kota Bahru, told Harakahdaily.
According to Wan Rahim, Ibrahim's the ultra-Malay persona may be due to political expediency rather than any real or deep-rooted belief that the community was still being marginalized and backwards after 52 years of independence from colonial British rule.
“Ibrahim is like a parasite, hopping from tree to tree to cari makan (make a living). Whichever tree he is on will somehow die and then he will flutter on to the next,” Wan Rahim said.
“I saw him recently and advised him to join Umno. But he seems frustrated that Umno hasn’t offered to take him back as a member. In fact, there is already an Umno man going around Pasir Mas servicing the constituents there as though he is the next candidate.
“So it looks like Ibrahim is back to square one, the days before PAS pitied him and lent him our machinery to run under our party flag in 2008. In the next general election, PAS will field a new candidate, so it will really be like 2004 for him when he had to face candidates from both Umno and PAS and lost badly as a result."
The frog king and the dictator
Yet the garrulous Ibrahim refuses to be daunted and is redoubling his efforts to stay in the game. He has changed political parties so many times it has earned him the nickname of being the “Frog King”.
But joke or not, his survival instincts – aided by a super ability to bend facts and/or omit key details - can match even those of his patron, former Umno president and ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.
However, the similarity ends there. Unlike the ruthlessly astute Mahathir - who ruled Malaysia with a fist of iron for 22 years - the more simple-minded Ibrahim may not fully realize the awful dangers that his newly assumed high-profile role can create for his countrymen.
“Perkasa is on a ‘crusade’ to make the entire nation believe that the Malay race is suffering from alienation and erosion of olitical power. Perkasa is quite oblivious of stoking the flames of racial tension and polarization,” said PAS strategist Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad in his latest blog posting.
“Perkasa now insists that the new economic model about to be presented by Prime Minister Najib’s government must continue to defend the ‘Malay agenda’ as it has failed to be achieved in the last 3 decades. They are least concerned as to why it failed and who had actually undermined nay subverted the Malay agenda, amongst others of not achieving the 30% corporate equity."
Said another academic, Dr Lim Teck Ghee, the director of the Centre for Policy Initiatives: “The mentor and ideological godfather of Perkasa is the former PM, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He endorsed Ibrahim Ali as someone “who is neutral, who is concerned only with good governance, who will criticize whoever, whether the government or the opposition.”
“Dr Mahathir and Ibrahim not only have a common interest in publicly massaging each other’s ego and respective causes but also in being perceived as comrades in the frontline of fighting for Malay rights in the face of rising non-Malay challenge. But are other Malays buying this line?”
Irresponsible words
For now at least, Ibrahim’s world view is much less complex than those of his patron and his detractors. He does not even seem to mind being regarded as a goon and as far as he is concerned, only colors matter in his world and these are brown, yellow, black and sometimes white.
“I first came in to Parliament in 1986. I remember, in those days, the non-Malay opposition leaders were of a different class,” Ibrahim said in a speech at a recent Perkasa function.
“But after the 12th general election (in 2008), we have seen the rise of a generation of more ‘biadap’ (disrespectful) opposition leaders. We have the Taiping DAP parliamentarian questioning the allocation for suraus; we have Teresa Kok (the Seputeh DAP parliamentarian) and the azan fiasco.”
“We have Lim Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng stepping on the pictures of the two Perak Malay lawmakers. If they want to step on the pictures of Chinese photos, it’s up to them but never do it to the Malays.”
On Wednesday, Ibrahim also accused Australian MP Michael Danby of being a homosexual for spearheading a move by 50 Australian lawmakers to censure Prime Minister Najib Razak over Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim's sodomy trial.
“Birds of a feather flock together. I heard that Danby is a homosexual,” a popular news portal reported Ibrahim as having said.
Danby married his longtime partner, barrister Amanda Mendes da Costa, in February 2008 at the Parliament House in Canberra, the first Jewish wedding to be held in the building. He has two children from his first marriage.
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