COMMENT The formal announcement today that incumbent secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution, vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar, and director of strategy Rafizi Ramli are banding together to contest in the PKR polls sends out the wrong signal to the party’s half-a-million members.

Of these 50 percent are Malays, 25 percent are Indian Malaysians, and the remainder are almost equally divided between Chinese Malaysians and the ethnicities of Sabah and Sarawak.

The Saifuddin-Nurul-Rafizi combo for the PKR polls scheduled for late April-early May is unwise because of the impression it helps reinforce that PKR is a Malay-dominant party, whereas its composition suggests it is multi-racial and its goal of a more egalitarian polity is reliant for its realisation on the country shedding its obsession with race.     

Observers are agreed that for PKR to continue to thrive as a political entity it has to get away from two impressions it is saddled with - that it is a personal vehicle for Anwar Ibrahim and that it is a Malay-dominant party.

Both impressions are incidental rather than inflicted.

The passage of time and the logic of PKR’s multi-racial appeal would erase these impressions, provided the younger set of leaders in the party, such as Rafizi and Nurul, aid and abet this evolution.

Hence their decision to band together with Saifuddin, a member of the older generation of leaders who are - it is pejoratively assumed about them - not entirely free of ‘Umno-DNA’ is unfortunate.

A regular member of PKR is distinguished by his/her aversion for Umno, for the latter’s racist reflexes, its preference for the corrupt over the straight, the mediocre over the meritorious, plutocrats over egalitarians.   

Saifuddin, one of five contenders for the deputy president’s post of which three are serious nominees and two are jokers, has become the go-to leader in a party to head off Khalid Ibrahim ( left in photo ), presently regarded as suspect, and Azmin Ali ( right in photo ), the incumbent who is widely viewed as a destabilising force in the party.

Khalid, wittingly or unwittingly, has drawn suspicion upon himself by his conduct over the water agreement he signed as Selangor menteri besar with the federal government.

 

Azmin covets Khalid’s position as MB and regards himself as heir presumptive to Anwar in PKR.

His problem is that most people are not convinced he would make a better MB than Khalid while many regard his presumption the way they do the candidatures of the fourth and fifth contestants, K Ramachandran and S Murali, for the deputy president’s post - a joke.  

Between the undesirable and the intolerable

 

Saifuddin is the preferred choice as deputy president of those in PKR who think about political choice like the philosopher Edmund Burke said it was likely to be, it confronts selectors with the choice between the undesirable and the intolerable rather than the better over the good.

That ‘undesirable’ Saifuddin is preferred to the ‘intolerable’ Khalid and Azmin does not make it incumbent upon Rafizi and Nurul to ally with him, particularly if that decision is seen to reinforce the impression that PKR is a Malay-dominant party.

In fact, it would be better if Nurul ( left ) opts out of the race. At 34 years, she is young enough to have time in which to bide her time until circumstances are more propitious for her ascent within the party.

She could use the space gained from opting out to campaign for a vice-presidential slate of Rafizi, Tian Chua, N Surendran and Baru Bian that would be of huge benefit to the party for reason of its being more representative of PKR’s multi-racial image.

If successful, such a campaign would boost Nurul’s standing in the party which would be useful to her three years down the road when the next party polls are held.

Furthermore, she would be seen as readying the party, in the event of the election of Baru Bian as veep, for the Sarawak state election which must be held by 2016.        

Also, since her mother, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail is likely to be uncontested for the post of president and almost certain to be the PKR nominee to replace Khalid as MB, Nurul’s strategic opting out would obviate the impression that PKR is actually Anwar Ibrahim Consolidated.

As things stand now, with her decision to team up with Rafizi and Saifuddin, Nurul has opted for a course that undermines her appeal, which like Rafizi’s, is to an evolving constituency who feel that the polity’s race obsession is obsolete.

       

Rafizi and Nurul possess an appeal that transcends sectarian boundaries in race-suffused Malaysia. If they burnish that appeal, PKR will continue to be the party of choice of voters who feel that being Malaysian is more important than being just Malay, Chinese, Indian, Sarawakian or Sabahan.     

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it keeps him in touch with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.