After long and in-depth research, full of arduous travel to tedious destinations such as Singapore, Bali, Los Angeles, New York, London and Berlin — with a difficult weekend side-trip to Helsinki — an all-party parliamentary delegation has come to the incontrovertible conclusion that it only rains in India.
The People's Parliament
On 5th November, last year, Malaysiakini carried the following report :
“Nahalan, a prominent leader in the east coast, took some time to explain his position at length on why he supports any proposed new party to be headed by Jeffrey.
“I received a call from Anwar Ibrahim last week asking me why I supported Jeffrey to be PKR state chief and not Thamrin,” disclosed Nahalan who is a Bajau-Suluk.
“I told him that Jeffrey was elected by the majority of division chiefs including my division. Besides, he’s the best leader we have in the opposition. It’s not true that he’s crazy about posts or likes to switch from party to party for no reason.”
Implied, but not stated specifically by Anwar during the hour-long telephone conversation, was that Nahalan should seriously think about supporting Thamrin on the basis of their common faith.
Apparently, Anwar was busy working the phones last week trying to persuade other Muslim division chiefs as well, including KadazanDusunMurut, to withdraw their support for Jeffrey to be the new state chief.
Muslim KadazanDusunMuruts come from the Orang Sungei along the Kinabatangan, Bisaya in the west coast and Ranau Dusun tribes in the high country.
Anwar’s willingness to ride roughshod over local sentiments in Sabah was the last straw for Nahalan. He said he realised that “Anwar has not changed since his Umno and Abim (Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia) days and is very much a closet racist” .
10 days later, at a ‘meet the bloggers’ session hosted by Anwar at the Lake Club, I broached Anwar on this.
He assured me that there was no truth in this and that Nahalan had in fact sms’d Anwar to say that theMalaysiakini report was completely untrue.
Anwar, of course, was not to know that I had already been told by someone who was at the meeting on 6th November, 2009, in Kota Kinabalu, where Tian Chua met several of the PKR state leaders, including Nahalan, that the latter had reiterated the very same allegation to Tian Chua.
I thought then that I would let this pass.
What’s a little face-saving white lie from a politician?
To be expected, no?
I was in Kota Kinabalu end of last month for the ’1963 Re-visited : The Way Forward’ forum organised by the Borneo Heritage Foundation together with the Common Interest Group Malaysia.
This was an important forum and I will blog about it soon.
I’ll just tell you now that what I learnt at the forum was that just as BN screwed us Semenanjungites big time, they did the same to Sabahans and Sarawakians.
Big, big time.
After the forum, I sat down to coffee with two PKR leaders from Sarawak.
The discussion, while wide-ranging, finally turned to Anwar and PKR.
“PKR, under Anwar, is UMNO by another name”, one of them said.
“Go and ask Anwar if he will deny that his plan is to keep the Dayaks divided so that the Muslims will continue to rule in Sarawak. How different, then, is PKR from UMNO? If he dares deny this, come back to me and I will give you proof”, the other offered.
I referred to what Nahalan had said last November and asked them what they thought.
“Anwar is more dangerous than that Perkasa fellow. That Perkasa fellow is openly a bloody racist. Anwar hides behind ketuanan rakyat. He is still on a Muslim agenda. Anwar is more dangerous”, one responded.
The other nodded in agreement.
Yesterday, I made a phone call to Sabah to get the inside story on the show cause notice to the 12 Sabah PKR leaders who had, late last year, during the height of the PKR Sabah leadership crisis, when Anwar had rejected Jeffrey to lead although the latter ostensibly commanded the confidence of the majority of Sabah PKR , filed an application with the registrar of societies to register a new party, Parti Cinta Sabah.
I am told that then, peace was finally brokered between PKR in KL and Sabah in that the ‘Jeffery’ faction would live with Anwar’s handpicked Thamrin until the party elections. The application to register the new party was to be withdrawn and PKR HQ and Sabah were to put this whole episode behind them and focus on making ready for the next elections.
Anwar has now reneged on this arrangement.
Anwar, I am told, is now suggesting that at the time that peace was brokered, he and other party leaders were not aware that an application to register a new party had in fact been submitted, and were under the impression that such an application was merely being contemplated.
This, however, would plainly be an untruth if, as I am told, the condition set by the party HQ when the peace deal was being brokered was that the APPLICATION WAS TO BE WITHDRAWN.
This is no longer a mere face-saving white lie.
Why?
My Sabah source tells me it’s about killing two birds with one stone.
Jefffey Kitingan and Zaid Ibrahim.
All 12 divisional leaders are known Jeffery supporters.
Lynch the 12 at the disciplinary proceedings later today and Jeffery’s political jugular vein in the party might be severed, leaving the way open for Ansari, a known Anwar man, and his supporters.
Muslim factor again.
As for Zaid, my sources in PKR tell me that from the word go, Anwar has not been altogether comfortable with Zaid’s seemingly meteoric rise in the party.
The logic is irrefutable. If rain fell on other cities, their roads would also crumple like Commonwealth Games toilet paper. Since no London becomes a moon track with one rainfall, it obviously never rains in London.
Fie on those who think that only Delhi surrenders to water-riven weather. The ‘low way’ (it began as a highway) between Mussoorie and Delhi is a very democratic drive. It begins in BJP khand, swerves through BSP queendom and then zigzags into Congress empire. This national artery gets a nervous breakdown in Uttarakhand, then descends into nightmarish trauma in UP. By the time it enters Delhi, it has an incurable split personality. It should be renamed after Freud.
We are a curious nation. For nine months we pray for the monsoon, and the moment our prayers are answered, we have no idea what to do. It is as if the showers came once a century rather than once a year.
You don’t need to summon Agatha Christie to solve the plot. Most of our roads are constructed for annual destruction, since there is more money to be made in rebuilding than in building. Governments are not merely hand-in-glove with contractors; they are hand-in-pocket. Shared loot is safe loot.
Contractors are not particularly worried about the law; they have lawyers with Satyam on their tongues. A congenial cynic suggested that it was time Parliament passed legislation decreeing that anyone worth more than Rs 1,000 crore would automatically be given bail. Businessmen make money all over the world. The difference is the distance between profit and avarice. The first has limits; greed has none.
In our country, corruption has become mainstream; honesty is a rivulet, which is why the System has developed such sophisticated expertise at deflecting street anger. The game is played out in full public view, and we do not see hypocrisy trapping us in slow motion.
What does the System do when it does not have an answer? It changes the question.
Witness how the rage against corruption in CWG has been manoeuvred into a debate on whether they can be held successfully. Who was responsible for this delay in the first place? Even this question has been diverted. The Organizing Committee, reorganized with some sticking plaster, is being reinvented from villain to victim of mysterious forces. We do not know if any race in CWG will see a nail-biting finish, but certainly the preparation has acquired a nail-biting dénouement.
Fudge is offered instead of explanation. The previous government, it is declared in stentorian tones, took the decision to hold the Games in Delhi. So? The previous government did not decide to hire treadmills for a few weeks at many times their retail price. Instead of treadmills, we have treadmillionaires.
A committee of 10 wise bureaucrats is appointed as the scourge to destroy evil and shepherd the Games towards a shining heaven. What has the committee been tasked to do? To “solve coordination problems…ensure completion…furnish progress reports…tie up loose ends”. In other words, to do within 45 days what should have been done over 45 months.
The simple fact is that they cannot take any decisions because all the decisions have already been taken during The Era of Evil — apart perhaps from a catering contract and sponsorship, the second of which is a revenue decision rather than a spending one. A government committee, incidentally, will provide excellent cover for the return of public sector sponsors.
The critical issue lies elsewhere. Indians are not against the Games; they are against corruption in the Games. Can this committee reverse any of the deals that have been exposed remorselessly by media? Will it return, without payment, the treadmills to those who have become treadmillionaires? Sanctimonious noises about the guilty being punished after the event are meaningless. How? If a contract has been sealed at a particular price by mutual consent, and then executed, how can the contractor be held guilty of malpractice? This is more dust in the eyes of a nation already semi-blind with sleaze.
Suresh Kalmadi was quite right to flash a V-sign after the “accountability” meeting at the Prime Minister’s residence on Thursday afternoon. The scapegoats in his committee have paid the necessary price. None of their decisions have been altered, since there were too many others clinging to the food chain. Nothing has changed, apart from the touch of a few cosmetics that barely hide the accumulated debris of deals. Long live the System.
Unless, of course, it rains on the parade in October.
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