Pakatan proves it isn’t ready for Putrajaya, yet

By Hafidz Baharom

It seems that the pro-PH gang would go so far as libel and slander rather than actually contribute to intellectual discourse. At the end of February, things took a head when “someone” decided it was necessary to accuse me by name of taking funds from the Prime Minister’s Office, to join in the #UndiRosak campaign.

Wow.

While there have been accusations made of those telling people of the choice on Election Day to spoil their votes, these accusations have been generally nameless – because mostly, detractors would understand that naming someone would open themselves to lawsuits.

“Someone” didn’t get the memo. And so, defamation proceedings will proceed.

That being said, I know why people are doing this – it is simply out of fear. And that fear is that Pakatan Harapan will not win the next general election. The reason for this fear, is the lawmakers in Pakatan themselves making non-sensical statements that trigger this reaction.

There have been accusations that the country will go “bankrupt” if Pakatan loses, that this is the “last election”, that “corruption will be so bad that we will never recover”, and even going so far as to say “we will become Zimbabwe”!

I love that last one, mostly because if you look at the latest press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders in 2017, Zimbabwe (ranked 128) is already ahead of Malaysia (ranked 144) in the ranking. Yet, we are still better than Singapore (ranked 151).

I’ll say it again – PH is cultivating a culture of fear. And while fear works wonders in terms of political propaganda, there is a huge problem when you ask them a very, very pointed question. And that question is this:

What exactly will PH do to fix these issues?

Now, watch the embolism pops as no forthcoming answer appears. Then, all you have to do is keep asking for more details.

How long would these changes take? 100 days? A year? One term in office? Two terms? 60 plus years, equal to BN rule?

And this is where PH just sinks like an undone soufflé.

There is a very visible reason why they cannot even suggest solutions jointly as one entity being Pakatan Harapan. And that is because, they really have no idea. And they have no idea, because they have no unity.

A recent survey showed that Pakatan Harapan supporter were better educated than those supporting Barisan Nasional. So, why would their side, being one of more brainpower than the other, have a problem with solutions?

It’s simple – while they all have the brains, they don’t have the trust among themselves to actually put one person in charge of policies for a certain sector or lead a team. Or in the case of any legit two party system, to even propose members of a Shadow Cabinet to do so.

Thus, the reason PH politicians use culture of fear, rather than try to instil hope in Malaysians of actually having better policies, be able to project unity, and even be able to give hope that they will “save Malaysia” – all of the above without bothering with the details – is because this is the only card they can play.

And while dogmatic faith in political parties are not new among their supporters akin to brand loyalty, the newer trend in politics among the youth is that policies must be inspirational, out of the box, achievable and relevant.

Thus, when you suggest policies in your Shadow Budget riddled with immature name calling of “MO1” and saying you want to control BR1M to exclude cigarettes and alcohol, or even wanting to tax capital gains without excluding the EPF which will impact everyone’s retirement fund – did you really think the youth and even adults were stupid enough to just kowtow and accept it?

Subsequently, when you promise to deport migrant workers, without acknowledging tax breaks for technological innovation in automating processes to reduce dependence on foreign labour in lieu of local vocational school graduates, obviously you didn’t think far enough.

Rather sad when you think about just how many non-government organisations and research institutions they have in their midst, as well as professionals from all fields as their candidates in the next general election who could have seen through some of their own policy shortfalls, but decided to remain mum.

Thus, when their manifesto with “60 promises” was announced as delayed by Dr Mahathir Mohamed due to fear that “the government would have spent more” to the point that a PH government would be unable to keep their promises, it just goes to show that their proposals were unrealistic to begin with.

For myself personally, there was one opportunity that they failed to take advantage of on Monday, on the first day of the Dewan Rakyat – they could have shown unity and trust among themselves by actually forming a Shadow Cabinet.

Their failure to even achieve that when it costs nothing, a symbolic gesture of trust and unity, on the last session for this term, just goes to show one thing – Pakatan Harapan is not ready to govern Malaysia.

But that being said, they’ve announced that their manifesto will be launched on March 8, titled as “10 Promises, 100 Days”. Catchy, but if any of the idiotic proposals from their last shadow budget and youth manifesto turn up yet again, it’ll be really depressing.

But I’ll read through anyway. And I’ll still back them even if I spoil my vote for this upcoming General Election.

Even if it takes them 5 years or a decade to mature and come together to actually be a viable government in waiting, so be it. I will wait.