If the opposition were to wrest power according to the route mapped out by its de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, it would be a government with no moral legitimacy. It would be technically and legally legitimate, but it would fail the higher criteria - the moral criteria. This is a grave matter and indeed would lead to grave consequences.

Anwar Ibrahim has publicly admitted that he has negotiated with various government parliamentarians and that he has roped in at least 31 of them to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR). With this, PR would have attained a simple majority or more in parliament and it would soon move to take over power from the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN).

We must bear in mind that people who voted BN wanted BN. The jumping of parliamentarians from BN to PR, after secret negotiations with Anwar, is a blatant and immoral betrayal of voters. Is this the ‘democracy’ and government that the PR deem acceptable?

BN and the PR component parties PAS and DAP are agreeable to a new anti-jumping law. PKR, led by Anwar, is the only one that disagrees. A number of countries have such laws eg, India .

‘Jumping’ parties is not the way and the country would become a laughing stock of the world. If elected representatives want to jump to another party, they should have the morality and dignity to resign and re-contest.

Interestingly, the leader who is currently engineering a government through the back door, is the same one who engineered the wholesale jumping of elected representatives in Sabah in 1994 from the opposition to BN. It is becoming to be a habit. The low morality of this route to power is readily appreciated. However the same leader is now vigorously promising democracy and good governance, as well as a host of goodies. It would be wise to judge a person from action rather than words.

It is also of interest to note that he has ‘changed’ quite a lot and is now a Western-styled democrat and Western human rights proponent. The West though, we must know, have as their ultimate objective in this region the checkmating of China, foreseen to be a clear challenge to Western global dominance. They also aim to suppress Muslims from challenging their dominance. Their relations with any regional leader will be assessed in how those two objectives will be advanced.

To be noted that on the whole, the strident critics of Umno or the BN have not been applying the same yardsticks to opposition parties and leaders. In merely one issue - the ‘jumping’ of BN parliamentarians to PR - they have been loudly and conspicuously silent. Are they really interested in democracy, justice and good governance as righteously claimed? As a group, they have failed one early test of being an impartial watchdog for good governance. It is, however, not too late to self-correct.

Admittedly such jumping in the past, which rarely occurred, had generally been to BN’s advantage. This time it is not.