Kita to go for polls with 'realistic' manifesto

Parti Kesejahteraan Insan Tanah Air (Kita) is taking a possible snap election - widely speculated to be held this year or early next year - seriously and is getting ready for it.

Other than identifying candidates, preferably younger ones, to contest in several states, the party has almost completed drafting its manifesto.

Nibong Tebal MP Tan Tee Beng, who joined Kita in February, said the party's manifesto was about 95 percent ready.

"We are currently doing our best to fine tune the document. It will be launched sometime at the end of June in Kuala Lumpur and in Penang," the former PKR parliamentarian said.

Tan, who left PKR last year, said the manifesto would not be filled with rhetoric but is based on issues.

"It will include issues on development, housing, education, law reform including abolishing the controversial Internal Security Act, and transparency, among others," he added.

On the party's political direction, Tan said Kita members were "open minded, and very Malaysian".

"That is the hope I saw in PKR. They had the perfect policies (on paper). However, with them in government (in some states), they have been disappointing," he told Malaysiakini when met in Penang.

"We believe in constructively criticising both sides of the political divide. However, the rotten part is still how a party is administered," he said.

"It is always the people who run the party who spoil it. They are the ones who are not as idealistic as their party's principles."

Before Tan left PKR in March last year, he confided in former secretary-general Salehuddin Hashim of "dirty politics and character assassinations" in the party, which he claimed he could no longer stomach.

Speculation was rife then that Tan's resignation from PKR was fuelled by other reasons, including being "bought" by the ruling BN, which he had vehemently denied.

Zaid's bitter fallout

Although Tan was highly critical of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng's style of governance, he has refrained from openly attacking Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

However, Kita president Zaid Ibrahim, who left PKR after a bitter fallout with the PKR de facto leader, has continued to fire salvoes at his former leader, especially on the sex video which involved a man resembling Anwar.

Asked why Zaid, who had jostled for the PKR deputy president's post and lost, continued to hold a grudge against Anwar, Tan said Zaid probably still had some issues with the opposition leader.

Tan also lamented over the political direction the country has taken and called on Malaysians to focus on key issues affecting the people instead of politicking.

"Since 2008, the country has been obsessed with gossip and scandals," he said.

"Hardly anyone is talking about important issues or policy matters. When we in Kita want to talk about policies... nobody wants to listen because these are not attractive issues," he said.

On the red paint splashed on the stall of a cendol seller, where a pig's head was also hung, in Sungai Bakap - which comes under the Nibong Tebal constituency - last Wednesday, Tan said poverty was a common problem and this was worsened by certain quarters trying to racialise the issue.

Penang police chief Ayub Yakcop said that statements had been taken from several people, including the cendol seller, who said he did not owe money to loansharks.

Tan said social problems have been rising in his constituency and criminal activities appeared as if they were committed by only one ethnic group.

"The problem with us is that poverty and social problems have been racialised or defined according to race, but it is human problems that exist here, not racial issues," he stressed.