This letter is written in response to The Star ’s article ‘Amendment process continues, says Mayor’ (Oct 3, 2014) where MBPJ Mayor Alinah Ahmad said the Petaling Jaya Local Plan 1 and 2 (RTPJ 1 and 2) amendment exercise will go ahead.

This is despite a majority of the councillors (14) having voted in favour of scrapping the controversial local plan amendments while 10 MPs and state assemblypersons whose constituencies are from Petaling Jaya signed off on a press statement affirming their support for the decision. Only four councillors supported the RTPJ 1 and 2 amendment exercise.

Alinah cited a technical reason under the Town and Country Planning Act to proceed with the exercise. She is correct, as the committee to revoke a draft local plan is a panel of three persons set up by the state planning committee.

Technically, the draft local plan exercise could not have started without the state planning committee ordering it or the MBPJ councillors ordering it at a full board meeting. Since councillors deny ordering it and there's no letter from the state planning committee ordering it, the process is highly suspect. Obviously, we are not going on technicalities when it does not suit the mayor.

The mayor’s brazen disregard for the councillors who are all political appointees, as well as the opinions of 10 members of Parliament and state assemblypersons from Pakatan Rakyat does not speak well for the Pakatan Rakyat government at all.

Let’s get this straight. The mayor position is by appointment from the Selangor menteri besar. Alinah represents the Pakatan coalition just as much as the councillors and elected representatives do as she is answerable to the menteri besar.

All these contradictory statements coming out of MBPJ just shows that the Pakatan Rakyat coalition is not even holding discussions internally about their differences. One side advocates one thing whereas another party advocates the opposite in public, which is symptomatic of an internal power struggle.

To be more blunt, the 10 MPs and ADUNs that signed the statement are all from PKR and DAP. The councillors who voted to scrap the RTPJ 1 and 2 amendments are from PKR and DAP. That means only PAS councillors could have voted otherwise. The Pakatan Rakyat Pact is broken here in Petaling Jaya, the very pact the rakyat had high hope on to represent them and give them a voice in local government.

In fact, the present situation is akin to what residents of Kuala Lumpur face with Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) where the vast majority of the elected representatives are from Pakatan Rakyat but DBKL is controlled by Barisan Nasional and does not care what the elected representatives think. The irony is that MBPJ is controlled by Pakatan Rakyat, or at least it should be.

Need to fix this situation and fast

In a nutshell, what you fail to do for the rakyat at the local council level also means a failure at the state government level. This is the logic to vote you all in Pakatan Rakyat out of government in 2018 if there no change (Ubah).

The Pakatan Rakyat politicians need to fix this situation and fast. As it stands, it looks like Pakatan Rakyat politicians in Petaling Jaya are caught in a bind trying to answer to their constituents while the mayor (and her unseen master or masters?) does not care about being answerable at all.

If Pakatan Rakyat really wants to salvage this situation, they need to sack the mayor, Alinah, and issue statements as a fully united government rather than three disparate parties of PAS, PKR and DAP.

After that, appoint an assemblyperson as the mayor of Petaling Jaya and have all the assemblypersons from Pakatan Rakyat in the city council and let them be responsible for all service of MBPJ and the development in Petaling Jaya and be fully answerable to the rakyat for their actions or inactions.