The rain was pouring but the evening was electrifying. The people of PAS and DAP gathered last night in, of all places, Subang Jaya, to hear the thunderous voice of Gobind Singh Deo, the wit and charm of Mat Sabu, the clarity of Dr Lo Lo Ghazali, and finally the steely determination of none other than the rightful Mentri Besar of Perak, Mohd Nizar Jamluddin.
He said he will not give up - and we salute him for that. That it happened at all - a PAS gathering with a prominent DAP speaker and equally prominent and popular Subang Jaya DAP assembly person Hannah Yeoh, and without the presence of PKR at that - on a Sunday night and in pouring rain in Subang Jaya, tells us that we've indeed come a long way from the Umno-induced ‘racial segregation’ of the past.
The mood on the ground is one of rising confidence that Pakatan Rakyat is here to stay. There is a unity of purpose partly sustained by the immense disdain for Umno. There is a widespread, informal and very often spontaneous unity among Pakatan people on the ground.
Pakatan is standing its ground against Umno's onslaught and winning the battle. There is a hardened determination borne not from winning five states in March 2008, but from the thought that they could have won more if not for the BN using their traditional methods of control and changing the rules as the game is played.
There are those who said ‘voters were voting against BN, not voting for the opposition’. But one year on, let's pause, look back and think about it.
Yes, voters were determined to vote against BN but any voter with any bit of intelligence would have known that if everyone voted against the BN, surely the opposition comes to power. The voters were game for it, they were determined to see the opposition come to power, they were ready for change.
And what about the Sept 16 thing? There are those who say that the current onslaught by Umno to buy over Pakatan representatives is a tit-for-that for Anwar Ibrahim's Sept 16 project. Again, we need to pause and think in light of current developments.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Umno would have grabbed power improperly, like what they are doing now in Perak, with or without Anwar attempting Sept 16. They have an ‘excellent track record’ in that sort of exercise. They would have done it anyway.
And they would have done the same in Kedah and Selangor. Yes, in the ideal world, we should not condone party-hopping. But are assembly persons and mebers of Parliament free to express the wishes of their constituents? Or must they toe the party line all the time?
BN has imposed the practise that their representatives must never vote against BN in Parliament or in a state assembly. So if a bill is tabled in Parliament that allows developers to build on a hillslope with a 45% gradient, the BN state rep for that area cannot vote against that b even though his or her constituents oppose it.
So now, this rep can't vote against the bill because his party forbids it while his constituents want him to vote against the bill. The rest of us do not condone him from party-hopping, and the law says that if he resigns, he can't contest for the next five years.
At the same time, many people are talking about taking a ‘moral high ground’ against party- hopping. Do we know what we are talking about; are we making sense ? We are just going on and on about party-hopping but in reality the whole system doesn't work and needs to change.
At the end of the day, there was nothing wrong about Sept 16. It was never about party-hopping. It was about sweeping changes and pushing those changes to their logical, rightful conclusion.
As it is now, we are more or less in a stalemate situation. Pakatan will continue to stand its ground, and rightly so, in all its constituencies.
Umno will continue to harass, intimidate, bribe and threaten Pakatan people everywhere, by whatever means. The ‘war’ will go on and both sides will not, and cannot, yield.
