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DEWAN DISPATCHES: No bloodsport as ‘David’ slinks away from slinging ‘Goliath’

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT, June 23, 2008:

The SAPP no-show in the Dewan Rakyat, for all the trash talk over the past weekend, was an anti-climactic disenchantment. The threat of filing a motion of a historic no-confidence against the battle-scarred Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, vanished even before it began. In the first place, SAPP's MPs Datuk Chua Soon Bui (BN-Tawau) and Datuk Eric Enchin Majimbun (BN-Sepanggar) didn’t even meet the motion’s first expectation – the duo was manifestly absent from Parliament House. The political public was deprived of its bloodsport.

There were the useless efforts to locate the two MPs at Parliament House, perhaps cowing away at one of the many rooms in the building. Of course, the no-show fuelled exponentially all forms of conspiracy theories – the duo had "jumped" ship and joined another BN component party, some believed the duo was stopped in their tracks after they had been "bought" while some in the opposition suggested that the duo was “whisked off” to some overseas location to prevent them from causing trouble. And so forth. On both sides of the political divide, the trance was as comedic as it was drilled in high anxiety.

A couple of hours later, the real reason for their absenteeism surfaced. It was both laughable and commendable. Majimbun, contacted by reporters at 11.35am, produced a somewhat implausible first excuse: he had a meeting with his SAPP boss and followed up a plausible second one: he had to attend a relative's funeral. He did promise to turn up tomorrow. While Majimbun did not know if Chua would turn up at Parliament, the latter could not be reached by phone.

Perhaps Chua found it more pertinent to fight a fire that broke back home in Sabah’s east coast town of Tawau after reports came that some BN supporters hoisted banners at different locations, urging him to resign. The supporters were incensed with Chua’s culpability in the motion of no-confidence against the PM and accused him of betraying the voters who chose him in the March 8 polls. To recap, the SAPP supreme council had endorsed on Friday Datuk Yong Teck Lee’s call for the motion to be filed against the Abdullah today.

Here was a political ‘David’ marauding his way towards the heady battlefront of Dewan Rakyat hegemony, trusty slingshot in hand and armed with a legislative stone missile with the potential to grievously befell ‘Goliath’s’ Barisan Nasional. Instead of living up to the carnage ingrained into the current consciousness since time immemorial, ‘David’ slinks away, his slingshot untested.

In any case, had the Sabah Progressive Party, a diminutive component party decks below the Barisan pecking order, had prodded its two MPs to enter the august hall and proceeded with what their president Datuk Yong Teck Lee threateningly affirmed, ‘David’s slingshot stone would still have not wounded ‘Goliath’, shielded was he by layers of legislative and regulatory armoury. And that’s where the religious analogy of David versus Goliath ends. SAPP has just become another wannabe political gimmick, so removed only as a political sideshow while being cheered lustily by the Pakatan Rakyat and egged on tremendously by people scenting blood seeping from a bloodied nose.

So, what was it? Did SAPP, after their unflattering declarations that their confidence in Abdullah’s crisis-laden leadership had thawed, trembled with cold feet? Or were they devising a different tact to embarrass the Abdullah administration on a different day and a different setting in this current 14-day meeting? A tact that would rumble into Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s political dislocation strategy to bring down the BN?

To be sure, SAPP was upping yet another ante in the prolonged poker game between disgruntled Sabah politicians and the Abdullah administration, the first call made by Datuk Anifah Aman (BN- Kimanis) when he flatly rejected a Deputy Minister’s post, which most people believed was demeaning to his stature. He soon tested the BN’s resolve when he declared in the House in the last meeting that Sabah’s BN MPs may defect to the opposition to protest what they claim are the years of neglect of and unending insults to the state by the Feds. His edict is still potently latent. True, Anifah’s ballsy move appeared to self-fulfil Anwar’s incessant bragging that he had the numbers to form a new government but chose to unveil it on Sept 16, the date to commemorate Sabah and Sarawak formally joining Malaya in 1963 to become Malaysia.

Regaining their composure, the BN was not about to let the SAPP hucksterism steal the show. Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Samad proceeded as scheduled with the tabling of a motion on inflation that urges support for the Government’s fuel subsidy restructuring to reduce the national deficit and pre-empt locally a possible economic recession. Following the United States’ sub-prime crisis has reverberated around the world, Shahrir also articulated the need to strengthen the government’s fiscal management and ensure strong economic growth. He warned that without subsidy restructuring, the Government’s budget deficit would surpass six per cent this year.

The political power play revolving around Shahrir’s motion had the Opposition, especially its wily veterans, animated. Putting into account the SAPP’s temerity but eventual no-show, Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) lived up to his predatory moniker, Parliaments’ Great White shark, when he outlined in his blog the buzz and excitement in the House after the PM unprecedentedly sat through question time until 12.40pm, especially after Abdullah did not stand up to answer two questions addressed to him.

Kit also played his cards up front, inciting BN leaders that Shahrir’s motion could easily be converted into a “no-confidence motion”, if it could be defeated. Kit speculated that the real reason behind Shahrir’s motion was to demonstrate that the PM still commanded confidence in Parliament. On pure numbers alone, the BN would win the motion comfortably but this did not deter Kit from insisting that the whole SAPP fiasco had made the BN very nervous. Confidently, he even surmised that when Shahrir’s motion "is defeated”, it would tantamount to a no-confidence motion. Kit’s confidence remains to materialise.

Even as Shahrir articulated his motion in earnest inside the House, the opposition mocked him outside with bicycle rides in a literal political statement against the petrol price hikes. The quartet of N. Gobalakrishan (PKR-Padang Serai), Tian Chua (PKR-Batu), Zulkifli Nordin (PKR-Kulim Bandar Baru) and Hee Loy Sian (PKR-Petaling Jaya Selatan) parked their cars at Bank Negara and cycled, with Zulkifli enduring the heat in his suit, the remaining three kilometres to Parliament, attracting a minor congestion as curious and amused motorists honked at the four.

Speaking on behalf of the four, Tian Chua explained that the bicycle ride was to underscore the difficulties faced by the people and challenge BN MPs to try cycling. “We hope this will spark more debates on issues that directly affect the people," he said. Predictably, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz dismissed the stunt as a “childish and stupid gimmick”. “It is not the way to solve a problem," he huffed.

Inside the House, the BN MPs blathered about how pump prices could not be avoided and supported the government’s measures to fight inflation besides urging that the effort is implemented properly without abuse. But it was nowhere near as rakishly intriguing as what Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng (DAP-Bagan) proposed: Petronas should disburse RM6,000 to families earning less than RM6,000 a month, asserting that it made more sense than the RM625 cash payouts to car owners. Lim also demanded that the government slash the gas subsidy to Independent Power Producers, which he alleged was raking in huge profits.

It would appear now that with the Government’s back pinned to the wall on tough-tackling the looming inflationary crisis, the Opposition will delight in inducing more populist proposals that would clatter like sound fiscal wisdom to a wearily distraught public struggling to get through their shrinking budgets. And that will play delicately into Anwar Ibrahim’s ambitions to become Prime Minister of Malaysia.