COMMENT Lim Guan Eng has no difficulty understanding that indirection is the mode in Malay political discourse.

Instead of saying “Saya tak setuju,” to something you are not willing to accept, a demurral, viz “Saya kurang setuju”, is the preferred response when employing this style of communicating.

This mannerism takes the sting out of disagreement or contradiction, mollifying dissenters and inducing them to dialogue.

Critics of this style will contend that it's time wasting and that it is better to go straight to the point and get matters over with.

But the style has its advantages in political discourse, especially in plural societies where racial and other sensitivities are like needles on a carpet on which one has to tread carefully.     

Though he has no difficulty comprehending the indirect mode, the DAP secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister finds it hard to employ it - his visceral pugnacity gets in the way.

That’s probably why he is in a bit of a bother vis-à-vis his erstwhile friends in Pakatan Rakyat’s Islamist component.   

Instead of suggesting that his interlocutors in PAS - its president Abdul Hadi Awang and secretary general Mustafa Ali - may have only a hazy recall of telephone conversations he had had with them on the issue of local council elections a few years back, Guan Eng has come flat out to say that the duo are being dishonest in interpreting what transpired on the phone between him and them on the matter.

Because the issue concerns local council elections to which DAP appears to be in favor while PAS is opposed and because support for such polls is now the vogue among NGO supporting urbanites, the matter of what transpired on the phone between Guan Eng and his counterparts in PAS has become public controversy.

Now Mustafa has challenged Guan Eng to a public debate on the issue.

The PAS point man gave web news portal The Malaysian Insider what sounds like a plausible rendition of what was said during a telephone conversation he had with Guan Eng.

Without a tape of the exchange, one cannot be sure who has given an accurate version of what was spoken, but in having taken the offensive by imputing dishonesty to his PAS interlocutor, Guan Eng has furnished unwitting evidence of how his lack of appreciation for indirection does redound to his disadvantage.

Instead of subtly suggesting that Mustafa and Hadi may have only a hazy recall of conversations he has had with them on the phone and in person on the issue of local council elections, Guan Eng has brusquely conveyed that they are being dishonest in their presently enunciated stances.

Mustafa replied by giving his version of the said conversations and has followed it up with an invitation to Guan Eng to a public debate with him to find out who is being candid and who less so.   

The DAP standard-bearer appears to be in no hurry to accept the challenge.

This is a surprise, given his penchant for debating his detractors – one recalls his jousts with former Gerakan president Koh Tsu Koon, and ex-MCA chief Dr Chua Soi Lek.

Perhaps it’s not wise to invite public scrutiny of his position on the issue of elections for local town councils.

Mock election

NGOs in Penang did suggest to Guan Eng that he hold a mock election for ratepayers so that they could vote for whom they wanted as their councillors, following which the chief minister could appoint the council.

A mock election cannot be construed as a violation of existing statues on the issue.

The CM did not find the idea attractive; more accurately, he pooh-poohed it.  

Furthermore, from Guan Eng’s testy response to the criticisms of former Penang island councillor, Iszuree Ibrahim ( left ), who at the PAS general assembly last September, rapped the Penang government for being “developer-friendly”, it’s implausible that he would be in favour of elected town councils.

For his pains, Iszuree was suspended, not from the council but from sub-committees of which he was a member. For 2015, another PAS rep has been appointed to the council.

It may be the DAP position to support elections for local town councils, but it may not be their sec-gen’s actual stance.

The PAS MP for Shah Alam, Khalid Samad, renowned for his support of opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat, does not think a debate between Guan Eng and Mustafa would be fruitful.

One begs to differ, particularly if Guan Eng is going for a  third-term as chief minister, should DAP and its Pakatan allies win Penang again - and not the country - in the 14th general election.

If he is not going for a third-term on the highly commendable grounds that Pakatan frowns on extended tenures for occupants of principal positions in its overall set-up - a stance that would render the coalition, on this score,  radically better than rivals Umno-BN - then a debate would not, as Khalid avers, be fruitful.

 

Otherwise, it could well serve as a chastening lesson on the value of indirection as a mode of political discourse, useful in a third term in which Guan Eng’s pugnacity is bound to grate more than it already has.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.