Anas Abdullah's effort to distance Keadilan from Raja Petra Kamaruddin's editorial in Seruan Keadilan is in vain.

If Anas is an official of Keadilan, Anas cannot be just "sad" that such statement was made. It is Anas' duty to make sure that Keadilan apologise to its readers, retract the editorial, sack Raja Petra Kamaruddin, and appoint someone with a truly Malaysian heart to replace him.

If Anas is merely a supporter of the party, Anas should at least call for the above and caution the party not to be blinded by its eagerness to topple the BN government and resort or allow its officials to resort to religious extremism.

Any Malaysian who is still sitting on the political fence (which I believe amount to a significant number in this country) will find that the party that claims to represent the "future of Malaysia", projecting itself as a truly multi-racial party and representing all Malaysians, has, five years down the road, degraded into a truly sorry entity. Its membership no longer can claim to be multiracial - non-Malays and non-Muslims are not impressed by its stand or lack of stand on the issue of Islamic state which is jeopardising instead of guaranteeing a better and fairer Malaysia for all, and the Malays are beginning to either doubt its religious integrity or its ability to expand beyond the Anwar Ibrahim issue.

Why can't Keadilan reach out to the Chinese? According to Anas and statements made by some Keadilan leaders, all blames are to be laid on the DAP which is "unwilling to allow Keadilan to prove itself in Chinese-majority areas". One wonders how Keadilan can still claim to be a "multi-racial party", when on its own, it can't even convince the people but have to beg the DAP, a party Anas loathes as "dominated by Chinese Malaysians with a few token Indian Malaysians", to give way in order for it to "represent the Chinese"!

And can Keadilan reach out to the Indians? We read much about the many problems faced by the Keadilan Indian members since its inception (which later was partly "solved" with huge number of them leaving the party to form Prim) and nothing much was heard about the party's stand and action in matters relating to Indian poor or when the Maika scandal recently re-emerged. Of course, many will still remember when the Maika scandal first erupted in the early 1990s, Keadilan's advisor and BA's future prime minister, Anwar Ibrhim, was the finance minister of the country. Could that be the reason for the party's silence?

What about the Malays then? We can see now the majority of the Malays have recovered from the 1998 political shock. Most of them have either gone back to Umno or remained in PAS. The clarion call in the fight for the Malay hearts and minds changed from racial tone to Islamic state tone, jeopardising not only Keadilan's so-called "New Malaysia" dream, but created fissures in the country's pluralistic and democratic nature.

It is sad that Keadilan has degraded into such sorry state of affairs: in order to distract the people's attention from its neither-here-nor-there position, its leaders tried to blame the DAP for "harping" on the Islamic state issue. To give credit to the DAP, Malaysians who live through the era of 70s and 80s will still recall a similar finger-pointing effort by the BN government then which accused the DAP of "harping" on the Chinese education issue, the racial discrimination policy and the Islamisation process.

Today, with the strict restriction still imposed on mother-tongue education, the decline in the quality of Malaysian education, and the polarization in our society, it only proves that the DAP which was accused by the BN as "racist" and "anti-Islam" in the past four decades, has been most consistent and farsighted. It is due to its ability to see beyond racial and religious lines and its vision for a Malaysian Malaysia, that the DAP is again leading the struggle to protect and defend the Merdeka constitution.

Keadilan should not play the mischievous role of BN of the 70s and 80s. Keadilan should prove its worth by showing the people what it can do and what it will do, not by stepping on the DAP or any other parties in order to stand tall, least of all to ride on the Islamic state tide like what Raja Petra Kamaruddin has done, pawning away the future of a just and democratic Malaysia in the process.