By J. D. Lovrenciear
It is unthinkable when some leader within the Opposition
block suddenly starts preaching about bipartisan politics and is said to be seeking to get
into dialogues of sorts with a party that took the mantle to rule with a
minority popular vote-winning. It is strange how some politicians will start
making roundabout turns. Let us start with the basics. The bottom line reality is the opposition secured 51% of
popular votes leaving BN with a minority count of 47%. But BN went on to form
the government. The voters are questioning, “What happened to our voice and our
choice?”
Where else in the world are minority vote winning political
parties sworn in to govern a nation – only in Malaysia. Now that is what the
rakyat are furious about. They will come to all post-election rallies not because of a
leader within that political party making his or her trade mark statement or
speech. They come because it is a platform to register their unhappiness. They
come because they see leaders who think like them and are prepared to take that
leap forward to help them have their justice returned.
Black 505 has already registered its mark as a gathering of
all Malaysians, cutting across race and religion demarcations and is not
restricted to PAS, DAP, PKR territories but is a nationwide concern. Period. Against this background of concern, how on earth can anyone
suddenly have the nerve to proclaim the need to practice bipartisan politics or
even to suggest that there needs to be dialogue between the winning party that
lost the right to form the in-coming government and the losing party that went
on to become the ruling government.
For as long as we try to sweep this fundamental democratic
principle of ‘the majority wins’ in an election - more so after 56 years of gaining
independence democratically, we have in reality set the clock of Malaysia’s political
maturity far, far back. Even trying to answer the numerous irregularities and
attempting to negate thread by thread the many allegations from blackouts to invisible
indelible ink is all hogwash. It is a mockery and insult to the human race that
has gone fast forward to democratize the world on all its four paradigms, i.e.
political, social, and economic and environment.
The
logic that all aspects of constituency-distribution
vis-a-vis gerrymandering will be redressed in the years ahead and before
GE-14, is yet another mock at the very foundation of democracy. How can
we even have gone
into election mode knowing full well that our notorious gerrymandering
has not
been resolved all these donkey years? If the opposition political party compromises on the very
fundamentals that the rakyat feel they have been betrayed of, then they too
must suffer the same fate as what BN and Najib are facing today. The citizens
will delist such parties and the price will be very high for politicians.
The logic of accepting the injustices of a flawed elections
for the sake of economic progress is also most distorting and grossly misplaced. You cannot have economic progress for
all citizens when the foundations of democratic politics and civil liberties
have been pawned. What you have in place is privileged economics that benefits
the few and those with vested interest.
Let us have some focus here. The moral obligation
equally
rests with political leaders to discipline their teammates. This is not
the
season to nail democracy prematurely. It is not even the season for disgruntlement's between leaders and hopefuls within political parties.
This is the season of getting honest and
serious about this nation’s future. Let us have the humility and the courage to learn from
recent history too. During the heights of the global financial crises, the
neighboring countries bit the bullet. They took the IMF option; restructured
their sociopolitical landscape and today are well on the way of riding the
progressive future.
Likewise, we Malaysians need to bite the bullet today in the
wake of this unprecedented and phenomenal politics of Malaysia. If we are not
living up to the tenets of democracy and civil liberties, then we cannot ride
the storms of economic crises that will come and also not surf on the benefits of
the changing global sociopolitical and socioeconomic that many nations are
already set to harness. There is therefore no room for dialogue or bipartisan
politics. What we need is to admit that our GE-13 was flawed; that the
intentions of going to the polls were morally wrong; that the means to the end
were unjustified and tainted.
We
need to have that wisdom and moral fibre to stand up and say in the
best interest of nation and king and citizens that democracy is dead in
GE-13. If we have what it takes to succeed on a world-class note of
distinction, it is, first to admit where we went wrong and rectify with remedies
that make us walk tall in the eyes of the global community of true democracies. The rakyat of Malaysia have matured. It is the politicians
who are falling behind.
To test the rakyat’s patience would be foolish; to
ignore the rakyat’s quest for fair play would be detrimental for any political
party. We are part of this emerging new world order. The times and tides have no place for
manipulated democracies.
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