COMMENT The hour has come for Anwar Ibrahim to match deed to word.

This now rapidly receding year has been one of dismal frailty in his party, what with defections, resignations and disruptions that have sown doubt about the party’s capability to lead the agenda of political change for the country.

A party seemingly cruising along nice and easy has been badly thrown off-stride, afflicted by confidence-eroding jerks and twitches.

pkr congress 281110 anwar syed husin Out of the discontinuity between the image it aspires to create - its capacity for a lead role in governing the country - and the reality that is less grand - disarray in its ranks and defective mechanisms in its administration - comes the opportunity for grand retrieval.

Where there is crisis there must also be opportunity.

 

A grand recovery is what is required of Anwar to slide back to the top of the wave for change he campaigned for intensively three years ago and that was partly consummated in the tsunami of March 2008.

Lapses and slips are par for the course in a political career. But when these are allowed prolonged tenancy, they erode gains made earlier and destroy reputations long in the making.

After a torrid exercise in leader-selection that tried to enshrine the most radical principle yet in Malaysian democratic politics – direct voting by party members of its principal office-bearers – the PKR supremo must make the remaining days to the year a period of unequivocal action rather than prevarication.

Anwar’s month of decisive action

These actions could begin with the appointment of a new secretary-general, one of professional administrative bent, uninterested in a personal career in politics.

PKR needs such a person in this critical role, to insulate the nerve centre of the party from the vagaries of the factional battles that democratic parties are prone to.  

NONE Anwar’s month of decisive action could continue with the selection of a new election director because the current one (Fuziah Salleh, right ) has now a party veep position to take care of in addition to the defence of her MP-ship of Kuantan, not an easy seat to secure in the next general election.

The top range to this activist response to crisis would be the appointment of Dr Jeffrey Kitingan to the post of chief selector of candidates for all the seats PKR intends to contest in Sabah, and not just the seats with a Kadazan-Dusun-Murut majority.

This move would effectively forestall what is being anticipated through the resignation the other day from PKR of Philip Among, Jeffrey’s chief aide. The resignation is a harbinger of disintegration to the party’s Sabah chapter.

pkr congress pc 271110 molly cheah Other moves would include the naming of a respected luminary in socio-political society to the chairmanship of PKR’s disciplinary committee.

Last but not least, Anwar ought to outline what should be done for the education of Dr Molly Cheah ( left ), PKR’s hapless party election monitor who has had a role akin to the retired Tony Blair’s in the Middle East peace process – a walk-on role of embarrassing nullity.

 

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.