Going beyond scrapping Penang elections

By TK Chua

It is a good decision to scrap the plan to hold the snap polls for Penang. I suggest no further time and energy be wasted to contemplate this issue after today’s decision.

Lim Guan Eng should just focus on his job in whatever time and opportunity that is left.

The elections as originally proposed would have proven nothing. There is no necessity to gauge the support of the majority of Penangites or for that matter the majority of the urban voters throughout the country. The spontaneous outpouring of sympathy and the generous donations of bail money for Lim were more than adequate proof.

I could be wrong: I think the proposal was just a hot air balloon to show off for whatever that was worth – confidence, defiance, frustration, etc. If by now DAP and PKR politicians are still unsure about the support of urban voters, I think they must be quite dense to say they feel the pulse of this nation.

With their limited time and resources, Pakatan Harapan politicians should rightly focus on doing the more important things. It is completely unproductive to engage in “tough talk” with Umno-BN if they can’t back it up.

A sage taught me a long time ago, Don’t issue any threat unless you have the means and the power to carry it out when needed. Otherwise it will only erode your respect and credibility.

The proposed polls are one of those unthinking actions. Another example is the recent threat of “political action” by Pakatan after the revelations of the US Justice Department’s suits.

When we have nothing better to say, it is better to say nothing. The real challenge for Pakatan is not to highlight another malfeasance or to expose another scandal. Many of us are already suffering from scandal fatigue. Another revelation will not make much of a difference.

Pakatan should rightly focus more on the difficult tasks lying ahead. I wished they were more united and talked more about the overriding objectives and the commonality of purpose of their struggle. I wish they could discuss more about how to penetrate the rural heartland and how to ensure a freer and fairer general election. I wish they could find ways to fight money politics.

I know all these are very entrenched issues and difficult to overcome. Well, there will be another general election soon. If there is nothing much we can do, be prepared to accept another set of results similar to the last time. We can’t do the same old stuff and expect different results, can we?

If Pakatan Harapan are in fact doing all these on the quiet, I wish them luck.

TK Chua is an FMT reader.

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