HINDRAF’s strategies of late have met with great suspicion
and even alarm, especially amongst the Indian community. Its leaders who
proclaim to be passionately absorbed into the cause of the Indian community
must recognize that time and tide is against everyone as we race to the polls.
HINDRAF must place a premium on the 3-C principles of
collaboration, consolidation and condescension. Only by having fought a battle
successfully along the 3-Cs can you create opportunities for negotiation. Mutiny mindsets or dagger-to-the-throat strategies will not bring strength, but
only weaken your bargaining chips over time.
Many are asking a common sense question: How can HINDRAF
negotiate and fall in line behind BN at this eleventh hour after all these
years of seeking, fighting, protesting and even begging for HINDRAF’s cause to
be heard by BN? The people who have been following and / or are interested
in HINDRAF’s purpose are asking, what makes you HINDRAF leaders to trust a
political party suddenly at the eleventh hour when that particular party has
neglected your very cause for over three decades?
People
are talking: Is there after all a connection between the leader's
returning safely to Malaysia from self-imposed asylum and the sketch
rising from the chapters of HINDRAF i.e. a possible aligning with BN? Even when your members were beaten, smashed up and drowned
with chemical waters, they the powers that be from the BN turf, remained
defiant and insolent to your demands – remember?
As we march to the polling stations come 5th May
2013, we need to realize that the credo is not about standing tall all alone. It
is not a time for leaders to think that personalities are indispensable. It is the battle-cry that is paramount.
And this is a battlefield HINDRAF is entering. The GE13 has to be the defining
mother-of-all-battles. And HINDRAF leaders must recognize that the time has
arrived not to fight or raise mutiny and least of negotiate for your cause. On the contrary, HINDRAF must prepare to join the voters to do
battle. The armory that will define victory in this battle is that of
collaboration, consolidation and condescension.
And so HINDRAF must decide and decide not in the interest of
its founder-members but the macro interest of the battle lines that have been
drawn by the rakyat. Wisdom also dictates that as we near the polling date, one
should aim to win the battle first before negotiating over causes.
IF HINDRAF
chooses to go along with BN, then it must ask itself why were its members and
the community it claims to represent made to wait for 55 years to make that decision?
Why make that decision at this eleventh hour? Does it not
place HINDRAF on the beggar’s end of the bargaining slope?
Hopefully,
reason and conscience will prevail over HINDRAF.
J. D. Lovrenciear
Kuala Lumpur |
