The Voters' letter entitled, Tsu Koon vs Tee Keat - who comes out on top? has made a rather interesting comparison between the two leaders who have been made targets of Umnoputeras' unreasonable accusations recently.

No doubt, Ong Tee Keat's determination in standing up for principles despite under tremendous pressure deserves our support and admiration. It is true that he risks his political career in sticking to his principles. What he has done is a great departure from those politikus who invariably chickened out when their government posts are at stake, with whom we are so familiar. For that I salute Ong Tee Keat!

However, I personally think the comparison made between Dr Koh Tsu Koon and Ong is not fair. The one who really in confrontation with Ong is Education Minister Hishammuddin Onn. And the issue is the so-called "hijacking" of government allocation to renovate Chinese primary schools.

In short, the whole episode is rather straight-forward, no "conspiracy or hidden agenda" by any party to the dispute. At most, we can say, the education minister concerned was over defensive of his ministry. And Ong has unfortunately been made a scapegoat of the ministry's problem.

The scenario is totally different in the case of Koh. If we care for a moment to trace the chronology of events that led to the "banner episode", we would have noticed that "something unusual was going on". We have seen Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who happened to be Penang Umno chairman, changed his stand from initially rejecting the unfounded "marginalisation" claim outright to "tacitly" supporting the claim subsequently.

We have also seen Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin changing stands from time to time. At last, we have even seen Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak joined the fray and suggesting that more power be given to Umno deputy chief minister in Penang. Mind you, this has never happened before in the political history of Penang with so many Umno's top guns "firing", whether directly or indirectly, at the Gerakan-led state government one after another.

Honestly, we, anak Pulau Pinang, were really worried with this highly unusual development and actually fear for the worst, i.e. the eventual collapse of BN state government in Penang. But what if the Umnoputeras and their usually reasonable and fair-minded top leaders only played up this sensitive issue due to their internal struggles to divert attention? And what if Koh misjudges the whole development and openly "fights back" the Umnoputeras, including their chiefs - none other than Pak Lah and Najib?

Only god knows what would happen if Koh and his party together with other anak Pulau Pinang who dread to see Umnoputeras dominates the state government "strike back". And if that were to happen, can you imagine the ripples effects to the whole Malaysia?

In short, the stake is simply too high for Koh to assert his personal ego or even principles under such critical circumstances. Herein lies the different scenarios Koh and Ong were in.