COMMENT Though the irony in the call was unintended, it rebounded with a mordant quality to the ears of DAP national vice-chairman M Kulasegaran.

His party's secretary-general Lim Guan Eng had urged Kulasegaran and its Perak chief, Ngeh Koo Ham, to prioritise the larger picture of Pakatan Rakyat's goal of capturing Putrajaya over the temptation to engage in intramural feuding that had sundered the state chapter in the last two years.

Perak DAP is said to be simmering with the tension from internecine wrangles between the two MPs, the extent of which reached an acme of sorts when Kulasegaran was not invited to a DAP-organised commemorative event on the fifth anniversary of Pakatan's March 2008 electoral showing that was held in his bailiwick of Ipoh Barat.

dap convention shah alam 080112 nga kulasegaran Kulasegaran ( right in photo ) responded to the slight on Twitter with a degree of intemperance which he must have regretted in hindsight.

The rancour prompted another round of mutual recrimination, juicier bits of which are conducted in the Chinese press, between the Foochow cousins - Ngeh, the Beruas MP and Sitiawan state assemblyperson, and Nga Kor Ming, the Taiping MP and Pantai Remis state rep - who are ranged on side of the DAP Perak divide against Kulasegaran on the other.

Perak DAP has been split in the last several years between the two factions, with Ngeh and Nga having gained the upper hand from successfully enticing politicians whom Kulasegaran had nurtured and brought up in the party to their side of the divide.

One of the defectors had reputedly told Ngeh that Kulasegaran had bribed a group from Gerakan who staged a brief demonstration in Ipoh the week before last that denounced Ngeh as anti-Indian and put up a banner to that effect at a prominent intersection in the city.

NONE When Ngeh charged that Kulasegaran had paid RM500 to the leader of the demonstrators to display the banner, he was chided by the senior DAP leader sent to mediate the latest contretemps between the feuding power brokers.

"How can you be so gullible as to believe that?" remarked the senior leader when Ngeh relayed at the mediation what he heard from the former protégé of Kulasegaran, whom he named, about Kulasegaran's complicity in the demo.

His gullibility apart, Ngeh has also a tendency to utter politically incorrect statements that have riled various ethnic and religious groups and though he has hastened to do damage control in the aftermath, this had not been successful at retrieving the multiracial image that DAP leaders are on notice to project.

Foochow cousins a liability

It is an open secret among Pakatan watchers that the future of DAP in the state of Perak where electoral muscle-wise, it is the dominant party, is dependent on the skill with which the party's top leaders outmanoeuvre the Foochow cousins who are a liability because they run a closed shop.

Fong Poh Kuan, the DAP MP for Batu Gajah, Kulasegaran and even Hee Yit Foong, the formerly DAP and now independent Jelapang state assemblyperson, have run afoul of this closed shop and vented their frustrations as a result.

Now that closed shop is poised to become more claustrophobic if Kulasegaran accepts a suggestion by the party's top leaders that he leave his Ipoh Barat seat to take on MIC's S Subramaniam in Segamat in Johor, thereby joining the DAP thrust into a BN bastion that is being spearheaded by Lim Kit Siang who is slated to contest in Gelang Patah.

azlan Human Resources Minister Dr S Subramaniam is vulnerable in this mixed-race constituency, thus justifying the risk it entails to Kulasegaran of leaving safe Ipoh Barat for tenuous Segamat.

A victory in Segamat for Kulasegaran in the prospective context of spectacular gains by the DAP would raise his profile as a DAP leader of national stature.

But leaving Perak would let the Foochow cousins' closed shop in DAP Perak unchallenged, unless of course the party's national higher-ups contrive to clip the wings of the territorial barons by denying them dual candidacies - for parliament and state - on which warlords thrive.

Thus Kulasegaran faces a dilemma with ironic twists. He can contribute to the attainment of a national goal - the capture of Putrajaya through daring insurgency in Johor - but that would possibly render carte blanche to parochialism in DAP Perak.

Opting to stay put in Ipoh Barat could well mean holding the line against parochialism in Perak but losing out in the quest for the attainment of national goals for DAP and Pakatan.

In other words, Guan Eng's call to the feuding factions in Perak to put national goals above personal vendettas is freighted with double-edged irony.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.

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