PKR MP Tan Tee Beng’s combination of contrition and obstinacy after a meeting with the party’s disciplinary committee yesterday was an execution of the ‘two steps forward, one step backward’ strategy beloved of communist tacticians of yore.

Not that the Nibong Tebal parliamentarian knows much about Marxist-Leninist strategy, but in apologising for unwarranted remarks he had made against party deputy president Dr Syed Husin Ali and in retracting them, he took one step backwards from the brink.

tan tee beng pc 030110 show syed sms He had dangled on the precipice of suspension, or even worse, expulsion from PKR when he followed up his attack on Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng three weeks ago with a broadside against Syed Husin after the latter had publicly admonished him that he was free to quit the party if he minded to.

Yesterday Tan stepped back and apologised for his impudence towards PKR’s No 2 but obdurately maintained his strictures against Lim.  

Ironically, it was his erstwhile comrade-in-criticism of Lim, Zahrain Mohd. Hashim, MP for Bayan Baru, who had first aired the bizarre view that Lim was communist-minded.  

Shortly after airing his criticisms against the CEO of Pakatan Rakyat-controlled Penang state, Zahrain quit PKR, denouncing party supremo Anwar Ibrahim whom he was initially careful to exempt from his salvoes against Lim.

Against Anwar, Zahrain’s criticism was that he had deviated from the PKR struggle.

Zahrain had hoped when he first trained his gun sights on Lim that he would stampede dissidents in PKR into leaving the party.

Initially, that looked likely to eventuate when Tan Tee Beng and PKR Wangsa Maju MP Wee Choo Keong publicly joined in the diatribes against Lim.

This was just before the Sodomy II trial opened against Anwar.

After a week of the trial, the proceedings must have been deemed not really propitious for the disgruntled among PKR MPs to scuttle and run.

So the already-quit Zahrain was left high and dry, with not a single member of the PKR division of Bayan Baru joining him in public excoriation of both the party and its leadership.

Award of datukship

All this must have had an effect on Tan who has been disgruntled about his situation in the party for a long time.  

Among other things, he was unhappy when his recommendations of corporate figures for the award of datukship from the Penang governor on the latter’s birthday, which were channeled through PKR, were ignored both in 2008 and 2009.

When his recommendations were spurned the second time, he led a revolt against Zahrain last June, getting nine of 13 Penang divisions of PKR to petition party headquarters for Zahrain’s removal as state chief.  

Zahrain was replaced as PKR state chief last October when Mansor Othman, newly-elected state assemblyperson for Penanti, was made deputy chief minister which then made inevitable Mansor’s appointment as state PKR chief.     

Thus when Tan joined Zahrain in targeting Lim in late January, it was a case of a spurious conjoining of personal disgruntlements against the chief minister more than actual grievances against his rule.

More now than a while ago, the whine of personal axes being ground is discernible in Zahrain’s and Tan’s attacks on Lim.  

That’s probably why Tan yesterday sensibly stepped back from one infraction of party unity while maintaining his impertinence towards Pakatan cohesion.

It’s a strategy that can save his bacon for now but not, if he is unrepentant, for long.