Penang DAP squabble: When service criterion is ignored

COMMENT “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected,” is one of the more renowned statements of disavowal in the history of democratic politics.

It is attributed to the famous American civil war general, William Tecumseh Sherman, who responded in this fashion when told that the Republican Party wanted to nominate him as its presidential candidate in 1884.

For its elegant concision and its near-aphoristic brilliance, Sherman’s statement has acquired an imperishable niche in electioneering politics.

Insert a negative in the first half of the sentence - “I will not accept if ‘not’ nominated and will not serve if elected” - and one would arrive at the nub of the DAP’s problem in Penang where party chairperson, Karpal Singh, is at loggerheads with state Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy.

Sherman’s statement retooled with doubles negatives in the first half would summarise the position of DAP state assemblyperson for Seri Delima, RSN Rayer, whose position it was before-and-after the March 2008 general election.

In sum, Rayer told Penang DAP that he would not accept the decision if he is not nominated as a candidate for a state seat although the party knew that he was not a service-oriented politician.

Still, it put aside its qualms over his lack of a propensity to serve and nominated him for the Seri Delima seat.

Lawyer Rayer was elected in a clean sweep by the DAP of all 19 seats it contested in Penang in the last general election, leaving the party in the pole position of Pakatan Rakyat’s right to form a new state government.

When the DAP, in election’s aftermath, picked Rayer to become a member of the state executive council, in addition to appointing Ramasamy as deputy chief minister, it was considered an unusual honour to Penang’s Indian community.

It was the first time that two Indians had gained places in the executive council.

Rayer the shredding machine

But Rayer declined the position because it would hurt his legal practice, thus confirming the party’s initial apprehension that he was not service-oriented.

Still, Rayer proved useful to the DAP in the state legislative assembly where he is the party’s equivalent of a shredding machine.

The manner in which the Seri Delima rep goes about his work in the assembly when he has an Umno opposite number in his crosshairs, which is as often as there are sessions, conjures up images of a shredder at work.

The way he neatly and forensically takes his targets apart, in his fluent Bahasa, is a sight that is - depending on one’s standpoint - exhilarating or exasperating.

Exhilarating, when the target has indeed been gross, as Umno or its stooges have been in several instances in the recent past; exasperating, when the matter in question is trivial and is not worth the steam worked up.

On occasion it has taken the deft intrusions of speaker Abdul Halim, a PKR appointee, to steer the one-man demolition team that is Rayer away from diverting the legislative body’s more serious business down nasty, partisan channels.

Ramasamy in Rayer’s crosshairs

Did you hear one-man demolition team?

Not just one man. There is Jagdeep Singh Deo, the DAP assemblyperson for Dato Keramat, who usually starts the attack ball rolling by raising an issue in whose sometimes intricate folds lies the bait that lures Rayer to get the chase going.

The whole spectacle is not very edifying, to be sure.

But when the targets have been patently fraudulent or devious - and Rayer is thorough in his research - his work is not just laudable - it is necessary to show that the days of parliamentary privilege as a shield for abominable behaviour are over.

The only problem is that when you see Rayer in full stride you cannot avert the sneaking suspicion of the ‘what if’: What if the deadly earnest he displays when he trains his sights on prey in the legislature is shifted to targets not exactly of the adversary’s party?

Rayer has now trained his gun sights on Ramasamy, a man who was dependent and appreciative of the young legal eagle’s help in Penang DAP politics.

The former Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia political science professor was new to the scene, especially to the Indian sector in the island state.

Rayer helped show Rama the ropes and the latter was deeply in the former’s debt for the service.

Kampong Buah Pala debacle

But things began to sour starting with the clumsiness that Rayer displayed in the Kampong Buah Pala issue in 2009 where Rayer, unprepared by his lack of service-orientation, was unable to show the requisite solicitude to the villagers who were fighting to retain their century-old homesteads.

Rama stepped into the breach to cushion the impact of the divestiture of the land on the villagers by gaining for them the next best option, which was units in the housing development to come up in the area.

Another area of evolving friction between Rama and Rayer is the former’s chairpersonship of the Hindu Endowments Board.

Rama’s chairpersonship turned out to be a marked improvement, in respect of the educational and religious needs of the Indian community, in the impact of the role since the days the position became the monopoly of the MIC as part of the previous BN state governments.

It’s not very well known in DAP circles that Rayer has got his own candidate for the chairpersonship of the board and would like Rama to oblige by yielding the place in due time.

But the role is a vaunted one in the Indian community and its potential for good is high so that a successful occupant will not easily cede the advantage once accustomed to it.

Fallout between the duo

Essentially, the fallout between Rama and Rayer is over the issue of one’s willingness and capability to serve the constituencies one is elected to serve.

In Rayer’s case, his position entails a tweaking of General Sherman’s statement in such a way he wants to have the cake of representation without the duty of service it entails.

In that respect, he is like his patron Karpal who was not service-oriented when he was MP for Jelutong and state assemblyperson in Penang.

Both are lawyers devoted to their legal practice. But in Karpal’s case, the concentration on his legal briefs was understandable in the lean days of opposition politics when it was deemed good enough if an oppositionist could just stand up and be counted as such.

And Karpal did just that to laudable effect.

But these days things are different. A candidate cannot say, “I will not accept if not nominated and will not serve if elected.”

 

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TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.