COMMENT Acute need for new coalition to have a chief spokesperson on its agenda.

Now that the new opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan, has been initiated and has named its prime minister-designate, the next item on its agenda is to firm up its agenda.

That too may be superfluous, if it is taken that the Common Policy Framework (CPF) of the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat can still see service as the manifesto of new-fangled Pakatan Harapan.

If the CPF or 'Buku Jingga' on which the late lamented Pakatan Rakyat fought the last general election in May, 2013 is going to be pressed into service for Pakatan Harapan, it would help if the new coalition designates from among its leadership cohort someone who will be its chief ideologue or theoretician.

It’s still early days but if the new coalition has a PM-designate and a common manifesto, it must folow that it should have a chief ideologue, the one to whom the press and the rest of what could broadly be described as the ‘digital democratic estate’ can advert to when controversies arise over Harapan’s postulates and premises.

This chief ideologue or coalition theoretician will articulate and defend the CPF.

It is a position much like the communist parties in the former Soviet Union and in China used to have.

The positions were called ‘party theoretician’ and were occupied by personages who held the posts for long periods of time because the holders were people seasoned in the ideology and were able to say authoritatively what was within and what was out of bounds of the party’s credo.

Clarity and cohesion will be of great help

One does not envisage a communist party-like rigour for the holder of a similar position in Pakatan Harapan, but something somewhat close would be a great help to providing clarity and cohesion.

Take the kerfuffle that has broken out between Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) and some of the lesser lights of newly-formed Pakatan Harapan.

To a media question on whether PSM had been invited to join Harapan, and from the assorted replies from federal legislators, Ong Kian Ming of the DAP and Khalid Samad of Parti Amanah Negara (PAN), were reported as suggesting that PSM had disagreed with a core plank of the CPF of the former Pakatan Rakyat that had to do with Article 153, which is the special position of the bumiputras.

That was why PSM, Ong and Khalid reportedly told the media, was not invited to the discussion that led to the formation of Pakatan Harapan.

This drew a swift response from PSM's former secretary-general S Arutchelvan ( photo ), that his party's non-acceptance of the plank was news to him because PSM had indeed endorsed the Pakatan Rakyat manifesto, called 'Buku Jingga'.

Arutchelvan's clarification had the effect of suggesting that Ong and Khalid had been misinformed about the actual position of PSM vis-a-vis Pakatan Rakyat before the last general election (GE13).

Then, what of issues of greater importance?

If a matter as seemingly inconsequential as PSM's position with respect to Pakatan Rakyat could have miscarried, what about issues of greater and more complex import?

In any event, ideologically, and if truth be told, just as the theocratic PAS does not belong in Pakatan Harapan, so too a socialist PSM does not.

Herein lies the need for a chief ideologue or theoretician for Harapan: it’s more of a role of keeping out rather than ruling things in.

True, this would be ironic, especially when borne in mind that when PKR called for a roundtable discussion on the formation of a new opposition coalition, the call was couched in an inclusive idiom – all parties, including PAS, were invited to join in the discussion.

PSM, somehow, was not invited and PAS opted to stay out of the discussion that was held on Tuesday.

No doubt, their absence speeded up Pakatan Harapan's parturition; ideologically, there is more in common among DAP, PKR and Parti Amanah Negara than there is between each Harapan component with PAS.

There are marked differences in the broad social democracy of Harapan's components and the doctrinaire socialism of PSM.

Ideologically, it's not just marked differences but a gulf between all four of these parties and theocratic PAS.

Parsing these differences and sorting out the strands is work that is much needed at this larval stage of Pakatan Harapan's evolution.

Hence the new coalition’s next order of business is the designation of a chief ideologue or theoretician.

The coalition ought to make haste, deliberatively.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.

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