Anybody who stood under the Pakatan Rakyat ticket could have won in Penang’s urban areas in the 2008 general election. The political awakening for a change was so strong among Penang’s half a million voters that the electoral wave swept aside 29 Barisan Nasional candidates in 40 of the state’s constituencies.

Penangites overwhelmingly voted for a change to get rid of BN once for all from their island state. But in their rush to effect the change, they also overlooked many shortcomings of Pakatan Rakyat candidates. They could not be bothered about the Pakatan candidates’ credentials so long as they had the satisfaction of voting out BN representatives.

However, after a 18-month rule, the DAP-dominated Pakatan government under Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has exposed its incompetency, non-accountability and non-transparency. The Penang government has proven to be indecisive and wishy-washy at best.

Lim, arrogantly, is more interested in politicking that being a political leader with the people’s interests in his heart. Of course such criticisms would inevitably invite sharp rebukes from DAP’s cyber-troopers. But that does not mean one shall fear speaking out one’s mind on the truth.

These teams of cyber-troopers are well oiled and marshalled by elected representatives. It’s absolutely shameful and disgraceful for an elected representative to be involved in such low-class underhand tactics to undermine his opponents.

Indian-elected representatives in Penang have performed remarkably well so far in cleaning up DAP’s dirty linen. But, as usual, they remain miserable performers as elected representatives.

They have rapidly become political liabilities to the ruling party in Penang.

Since being elected, they are active in carrying out a smear campaign to tarnish Hindraf, mostly via anonymous SMSes and cyber-sniping. These ‘mandors’ promised to save Kampung Buah Pala as an Indian heritage village for Penangites. But the village is now dust and sand.

They vowed to stop the village’s demolition over their dead bodies. One of them had even said publicly that he would stand before the demolition machines to stop the village destruction.

But during the demolition exercise, none of them could be sighted in the village.

Sources said they did not even entertain phone calls during the demolition, leaving the residents hopelessly, helplessly and haplessly at the mercy of the rampaging developer’s demolition team.

The village is now dead and buried, but we could not find the bodies of these ‘mandors’ among the debris and rubble.

Of course, when Lim himself could not keep his word, one shall not bet on his mandors fulfilling their vows. During the last general election campaign, a mandor with the then Barisan Nasional state government promised to renovate and refurbish two blocks of abandoned low-cost flats in Taman Tun Sardon.

Now after being elected, the mandor is yet to bring up the issue at any forum. People in his own area are deprived of houses and as an elected representative he could not be bothered to speak up for them. After winning the election, he is yet to visit the area, let alone pay a courtesy call on the abandoned flats.

One shall also recall that these mandors, except for Deputy Chief Minister (I) P Ramasamy, declined to accept another executive council post for an Indian. By doing so, they deprived Penang Indians of their right to have another exco position in the state government.

These mandors were keen to pursue other businesses rather than serve the people in a strong political capacity. However, these mandors are not that bad performers on other fronts though.

They have proven to be swift in damaging others’ credibility.

One shall also admire these mandors’ guts for threatening social activists, individuals, reporters, media organisations and even villagers whenever the going gets tough. These mandors also collected millions from the Malaysian public for the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. This fund’s accounts were never revealed and no one knows what happened to the money.

They now owe a public explanation on the Sri Lanka Tamil fund. One mandor used his service centre logo to organise a fund-raising dinner immediately after being elected in March 2008.

Firstly, the dinner was unlawful because using one’s assembly service centre as the organiser is against the government’s legal rules.

This mandor has yet to reveal, until today, the accounts of the dinner proceeds. Lim and his Indian mandors have also successfully manipulated the media and residents over the Kampung Buah Pala (KBP) fiasco.

They portrayed themselves as Kampung Buah Pala champions when in truth, they cheated the people and flopped big time. The mandors brought a ‘Datuk’ to KBP pretending to help the villagers to secure a better compensation deal from the government.

Coincidently, after the Datuk’s arrival, the villagers agreed to the shoddy compensation deal and paved the way for the demolition. Now the Datuk is reportedly getting a lucrative contract to build the monorail infrastructure project at Batu Kawan.

Pakatan has six Indian elected representative in Penang but none of them could stop KBP’s demolition. Having more Indian representatives in Pakatan has clearly proved to be useless for the Indians.

At the next election, one cannot anticipate that Penangites will be in the same mood for changeas March 8, 2008. Pakatan cannot take things for granted. It should get rid of its unreliable non- performing representatives. The mandors shall be axed from candidacy.

Otherwise, Lim’s government would just be a one-term wonder.