comment PKR has weaseled out of taking drastic action against its recalcitrant MP Zulkifli Nordin and opted instead to impose a gag order and refer him to the party’s disciplinary committee.

The majority of its 23-member political bureau, at its meeting yesterday , was in favour of sacking Zulkifli but two senior members plumbed for the less punitive course of ordering his silence and requiring him to face the disciplinary committee.

The minority view prevailed at the end of a three-hour meeting.

azlan The problem with the minority view was that PKR’s disciplinary committee had already in 2008 recommended his sacking after Zulkifli had deeply embarrassed the party by his bellicosity towards a Bar Council meeting that was called to discuss the issue of religious conversions.  

In retrospect, the politburo’s failure to endorse that decision to sack Zulkifli had only encouraged him to successively higher levels of defiance of party discipline and policy coherence.  

Now the politburo’s ducking out of taking the bull of Zulkifli’s defiance by the horns and throttling it suggests that when it comes to disciplining its rebels, the party’s rival, Umno, has fared rather better.

PKR’s bark worse than its bite

The fate last year of Ahmad Ismail, Umno’s Bukit Bendera division chief, is a case in point. He behaved deplorably and spoke inflammatorily at a press conference in September last year after PKR’s Anwar Ibrahim had regained his parliamentary bastion of Permatang Pauh.

Umno had no hesitation in suspending Ahmad Ismail.

In terms of excesses, Zulkifli’s public pronouncements and actions have been far worse a violation of PKR norms than Ahmad Ismail’s deportment was of Umno’s.  

But PKR has been limp-wristed in bringing Zulkifli to heel whereas Umno had been firmer in disciplining Ahmad Ismail.  

PKR’s decision to opt for the velvet glove rather than the bludgeon towards its flagrantly rebellious of representatives suggests that its bark is worse than its bite, its actions less principled than its rhetoric.