PKR supremo and putative chair of Pakatan Rakyat Anwar Ibrahim said the opposition coalition does not aspire to be a monolithic entity but neither does it want to sound like a cacophonous street band.

Alluding to the discord among Pakatan’s three-party coalition in recent weeks, Anwar said: “We do not want to be a coalition in which a single set of vocal chords calls the tune with chorus boys providing the backing.”

Anwar was asked by Malaysiakini to comment on the internal disputes that have sullied the Pakatan ranks in recent weeks.

“A certain amount of discord is unavoidable because we are a broad coalition of principles and interests,” he explained, taking pains to emphasise the word ‘broad’.

“In airing dissent publicly we must refrain from acrimony and when castigating fellow members, we must avoid the language of expulsion and exclusion,” advised Anwar.

He was referring to, among others, the call by Selangor PAS for a top Pakatan cabinet member, Ronnie Liu from DAP, to be removed from his portfolio.

“An imperious attitude amongst us ill-suits a coalition striving to convince the public that we can provide governance that is transparent and accountable,” he asserted.

‘Disorderly’ democracy

Anwar described the feuding in Pakatan components and the inter-party quarrels as part of a society’s attempts to become more democratic by freeing itself from the long rule of Barisan Nasional.

“In other times and places, people have called this form of governance ‘guided democracy’, preferring the peace it entailed to ‘disorderly’ democracy,” said Anwar.

“But over time, we have come to realise that this form of democracy makes the people mediocre and passive in the face of curtailments to liberty and the monopolisation of wealth by elites,” he opined.

“A certain amount of disorder is inevitable but we must realizs that the practise of democracy entails recognition of self-imposed restraints like tempering speech and action with prudence,” he asserted.