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DEWAN DISPATCHES: House becomes platform for last-ditch Permatang Pauh campaigning

by: Azmi Anshar
DEWAN RAKYAT Aug 25, 2008

In the hours accelerating towards midnight tonight, the best place to look out for fiery debates, never mind if they are outlandish, hyperbolic, exaggerated and existentialist, is at the any given ceramah spots in Permatang Pauh, the constituency where the battle to capture the parliamentary seat climaxes tonight before polling begins at 8am tomorrow.

It is a battle that decries common courtesy, mutual cooperation and empathy for fellow human beings. It is a selfish battle to win at all cost in an already familiar zero-sum game. It is a battle that becomes the harbinger for Malaysia’s political future, deciding whether the 140-82 Lower House parliamentary composition in favour of the Barisan Nasional would become unhinged.

The 58,000-odd voters, some 3,000 of them still flip-flopping fence-sitters, is not exactly confronting a Hobson’s choice of candidates though if you were to seek a perspective from the biased, prejudiced partisans, voting for the other one is a breath short of blasphemy.

Let’s view this as a pugilists’ ring of fire: one the red corner, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the heavyweight champion of political comebacks, the poster boy for people supremacy riding on the preponderance of the Penang Government pitted against the underdog challenger in the blue corner, the great Umno hope, Datuk Arif Shah Omar Shah, also affably conversant in Mandarin and carrying the weight of all of BN’s probable survival.

Anwar has repeatedly bragged that he is the Prime Minister in waiting and the sacred date of Sept 16 will be his day of crowning. His victory tomorrow, as he and his supplicants have vowed, will be the next in a series of successive home runs. Losing is not an option and was never a possibility even in the most discursive coffeeshop ramblings of political pundits, professional or amateur.

Should he lose, Arif Shah has his Seberang Jaya state seat to fall back on and despite what the cynics’ predict, he won’t exactly succumb to political oblivion. But if Arif Shah were to win, he’d probably be given a blank cheque of great political value – a Cabinet posting perhaps and a stratospheric standing in the coming Umno elections.

Less than 24 hours before balloting for the Permatang Pauh parliamentary by-election hits full verve, the Dewan Rakyat, at 300km or so down south, quaked again at the mention of Anwar ‘s name as the House becomes the platform for some last-ditch campaigning for the undecided fence-sitting voters.

Anwar’s name is obsessively reverent to the Pakatan Rakyat MPs, who seemed to prostrate on the ground he treads whenever his name is hailed, hollered or hackneyed. Nevertheless, Anwar’s homecoming to the House is highly and anxiously anticipated, his victory already etched in stone, if you were to measure the hyper-zealotry of his supporters conviction.

However, on the other side of the political partition, it’s a different proposition – Anwar’s name is anathema to Barisan Nasional backbenchers. It is likely that his chief detractors would rather get an enema than see him win tomorrow. An enema it is then if the buzz ion the ground is anything to go by.

But for today, they have applied their House privilege as an opportunistic moment to knock down a few notches that obsessive reverence and try to help swing some votes to their candidate, Datuk Ariff Shah Omar Shah.

The way Datuk Mohamed Aziz (BN-Sri Gading) raised the supplementary question on the PKR adviser/PM-in-waiting was a trite mischievous but if it’s inside the House, anything goes is the mantra. Mohamed Aziz was perhaps at his most deadpanned when he posed this query to Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung: “What is your opinion on the fake nature of Anwar Ibrahim’s political struggle?”

Granted, the poser was way off base and there was nothing within the line of question to suggest that Anwar Ibrahim or Permatang Pauh was a relevant detour, so the supplicants went ballistic in their loud protests. "Out of topic, his question is out of topic," Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham (DAP-Beruas) exclaimed. His compatriot and fellow Anwar supplicant, Tony Pua Kiam Wee (DAP-Petaling Jaya Utara), also abhorred Aziz’s line of questioning while insisting that it was irrelevant.

Chor played within the BN’s scheme of things: he was not about to be outplayed and outshouted by the DAP MPs valid protests and played along with Aziz’s line of questioning. "This has been the nature of opposition leaders for many years. They will never change, and I hope Permatang Pauh voters will not be cheated by the opposition tactics."

The Opposition outrage at the glib nature of Chor’s response was right on cue. The backbenchers simply smirked and nodded their heads in agreement.

It was clear that the Opposition bloc have to come to terms that they have to expect some tacit BN maneuvres in the House with Permatang Pauh within a whisker of victory…or defeat. Any form of protests against irrelevant questions or statements will be met with steely indifference, either by the Cabinet Ministers or even the Speaker himself.

Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia didn’t need any prodding to subdue the bickering: it was in his authority but the way he resolved it was rather disingenuous. He didn’t do it by rebuking the Deputy Minister who produced the glib rejoinder but by extinguishing the MPs’ denunciations with a cold-blanket declaration. "If you are brave enough to criticise, then you should be brave enough to accept criticism. So learn to practice patience," went his moralistic enunciation.