COMMENT Is it enough for DAP’s Lim Kit Siang to caution Pakatan Rakuyat supporters and fence-sitting voters not to expect an outright win against Umno-BN in the forthcoming Tenang by-election?

 

One answer is that it would be sufficient for Lim’s ‘be realistic’ caution if he and Pakatan have already calculated that the seat cannot be won. Which, in itself, raises a number of questions about the election strategy.

 

lim kit siang 030606 But here Lim also tries to salvage the DAP-Pakatan political face: If Pakatan is able to cut into (“reduces”) BN’s 2,450-vote majority, then “it would be a victory for the people and Pakatan Rakyat, paving the way for the next general election”.

 

It may. But it may not.

 

Lim failed to say how much of BN’s majority Pakatan needs to reduce to (a) consider this as a “victory” even if it does not pick up the seat; and (b) how the heck this inroad would definitively pave the way for Pakatan to take Johor from BN and replace BN as the national government at the next federal poll due in 2013.

 

Lim seems sure. Yet he hasn’t given the slightest clue of the margin of reduction of BN’s massive majority in the Tenang seat that seemingly underlines his longer-term hope.

 

Perhaps he has missed the point of his own internal contradiction.

 

But hope is all that underscores Lim’s so-called realism. And the real realism in Lim’s cautionary tale is, I suspect, that he knows Pakatan won’t win Tenang.

 

He has given up.

 

azlan This is not good enough. Pakatan must come close - very close, in fact - to knocking off BN in Tenang to give itself a better than a slight fighting chance to take the state seat and, later, Johor in the 2013 poll.

 

There needs to be a roll-on effect, where taking Tenang will potentially also win other key seats, especially the marginal ones, to toss the Johor BN regime out on its ear.

 

Coming that close would give Pakatan momentum and a greater unity of purpose of the opposition parties in its alliance.

 

Pakatan has no policies

So, to the next obvious question: What is DAP-Pakatan’s next step, with 2013 in mind?

 

One thing (among many) that has bemused me all along about the Pakatan alliance is that it has been long on rhetoric for too long and short on national policies for too long.

 

No doubt t azlan he Pakatan-led states of Penang and Selangor seem to be holding their own, although Selangor, for obvious reasons - being the richest and thus offering the biggest pot of gold to fill BN’s coffers and the pockets of its cronies and nepotists, as well as restoring Umno’s battered political pride - is under siege.

 

But with Penang’s coffers also filling up nicely, after years of rorting by the BN-Gerakan regime led by the incompetent Koh Tsu Koon, BN will begin to strenuously undermine the incumbent Pakatan government in whatever way possible.

 

The one thing Pakatan must not do is let political power become the ego of its individual members in political office, such as Lim Guan Eng’s political secretary, who stupidly exceeded his authority in a matter that was strictly for the Penang Municipal Council.

 

PAS will likely continue governing Kelantan after the 2013 general election.

 

Perak has gone to the dogs, with BN seizing control in the most gut-wrenchingly cowardly way but rather typically of the craven-ridden, corrupt-minded Umno-BN politicians.

 

There is reasonable doubt over Kedah, but there’s strong doubt that, after Selangor and Penang, Pakatan can take Johor. At least not in the way that Pakatan has been offering itself as a credible alternative government.

 

It has no policies. Because if it did, then it could more forcefully argue that its election strategy in Tenang would give it more than a fighting chance of taking that seat than Lim has surrendered before the first vote is even cast.

 

If Pakatan think azlan s it still has time between now and 2013 to put together winnable election strategies at state and federal levels, then it needs to stop the mindless political rhetoric that Lim casts as “realism” and do the real things that do matter in the real political sense of winning government. It must come up with real election strategies that will get Pakatan over the line.

 

That’s the first hurdle.

 

The next hurdle: Ernest discussions about how Pakatan will share power. That’s a massive reality, and not one to be easily dismissed or papered over. State models may provide some clues to this, but only some.

 

At the federal level, it’s a very different proposition altogether, one fraught with all kinds of possibilities - and inherent dangers.

 

All these plans must be conducted openly and transparently. Voters must gain a clear understanding of what each component party stands for and how it will function as a single unit unified under the banner of Pakatan.

 

Pakatan must have clearly defined long-run common goals and strategies. It must also spell out the national interest in as nearly utterly unambiguous terms as humanly possible.

 

Then, and only then, will it be armed with a new realism that will give it an even better than a real chance of tossing out the heinously racist, corrupt and incompetent dimwits in Umno-BN who have drained national wealth, appropriated it for themselves, and let Malaysia go to the dogs.

 

 

 

MANJIT BHATIA is an Australian academic, writer and journalist. He is also research director of AsiaRisk, a risk analysis consultancy. He now divides his life and work between Australia, Britain and the US.