‘Creative destruction’ is a term tossed around by those who want to break out of the confines of the political, cultural and racial silos they may find themselves in with proposals at once daring and emancipating.

Its most popular historical antecedent was the Gordian knot that Alexander the Great was said to have severed with one dazzling stroke that was supposed to have dispelled all its mystification.    

Such daring is required by PKR in its choice of candidate for the Hulu Selangor by-election whose dates for nomination and polling will be set by the Election Commission this Friday.

Already, there are calls from party members that an Indian Malaysian be fielded because Hulu Selangor has been a safe seat for the MIC for several elections until the last one when its deputy president G Palanivel lost to PKR’s Dr Zainal Abidin Ahmad, whose death has triggered the by-election.

Actually, this sort of talk is not progressive from the standpoint of what PKR has set out to do to the Malaysian political landscape, long fragmented into unyielding racial-cum-religious categories by the Umno-led Barisan Nasional.

Properly speaking, members of PKR should not be overly concerned with the race or religion of their candidate as much as his or her suitability.  

But nobody pretends that PKR can achieve its goal of altering the political landscape overnight, especially in the face of the views of some of its minority-race members whose people stand most to benefit if presently rigid stratifications race and religion become malleable in Malaysia.

Clearly, the destructive legacy of decades of Umno’s fragmentation of Malaysian society along sectarian lines will take some time to undo.

Offer seat to DAP

PKR would go a long way to hasten that undoing by offering Hulu Selangor seat to its Pakatan Rakyat partner, DAP, in return for the Batu Kawan parliamentary seat in Penang, which is held by DAP (Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy).

azlan PKR could then leave room for it to manoeuvre with P Uthayakumar such that in return for the cooptation of his movement by PKR, the Hindraf leader would be offered the Batu Kawan seat at the next general elections.

The benefits of this deal would be considerable: DAP would get a chance to field a suitable candidate in a Malay-majority constituency in a semi-urban area where it rarely, if ever, has won.

With strong support from PKR and PAS, DAP may well retain the seat, thereby gaining an opportunity to demonstrate that it can serve the people well in a Malay-majority constituency.  

PKR, with this move, would be enabled to draw Uthayakumar into its fold; the move would inevitably mute the man’s radicalism and integrate basic aspects of the Hindraf agenda into PKR’s vision for the alleviation of poverty, regardless of the race of its victims in Malaysia.

Smacks of appeasement?

This arrangement may appear far too idealistic, given the interests and egos of the players who will be affected by it.

But this arrangement will forestall a clash between Hindraf and DAP in Penang and Hindraf and PKR in some seats in Negri Sembilan and Selangor in the 13th general election, which is expected to be held in the middle of next year.

NONE There will be those who will argue that this deal smacks of appeasement of Uthayakumar whose stridency has singed all players on the national political front.

But for perspective, Uthayakumar’s stridency is no more or no less than Umno Youth’s in the 1970s.  

It’s cooptation at this stage by PKR would lead to its muting.

Would that be too optimistic a take on the likely trajectory of Uthayakumar’s radicalism?

It’s a risk worth taking. If he does not de-radicalise, he will likely find himself left in the wilderness as all radicals who do not moderate their fire in the crucible of democratic politics.