COMMENT It would have been better if the announcement had come from the Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali himself.

He heads the ruling coalition in the state and if it was he who had formulated the stance and highlighted it, matters would have been clearer.

Even without that, the stand enunciated by PKR parliamentary whip Johari Abdul that DAP state assembly representatives in Selangor can vote their conscience on matters of public interest is a great help towards alleviating tensions between the two parties as a result of the contretemps in the Penang legislature last week.

There, in the state that is supposed to be a Pakatan Harapan showcase, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has transformed a tempest in a teacup - the absention of five PKR reps on a motion tabled by the Umno opposition on land reclamation projects - into a major controversy requiring the drawing of red lines to separate supposed malcontents from stalwarts in the ruling coalition.

By abstaining, the five PKR reps had incurred the wrath of Lim who said their action savoured of mutiny.

He proceeded to reprise George Bush's post 9/11 stance by telling the state PKR that they are either unitedly for the state government or against it.

This is needless melodrama and Johari Abdul should be credited with helping to bring bracing good sense to bear on a controversy which Lim’s histrionics has converted from hubbub to flare-up.

Theoretically, if legislators belonging to Pakatan Harapan cannot be allowed to vote their conscience on matters of public interest, pray what may be the difference between them and an ever monolithic BN?

Lim’s very public angst over the action of the five PKR reps has had the unfortunate effect of calling attention to his weaknesses more than his strengths.

He has been an effective chief minister, that only a rabid BN partisan would deny.

But the complex challenges of leading an opposition state government in a second term where the pressures from high population density and traffic congestion may be beyond the ken of someone whose street fighting instincts preclude the consultative approach and subtler arts of governance which entail taking advice and rendering it better than obtained at source.

Kudos to Johari Abdul, then, for stating the obvious that PKR government in Selangor will respect the choice of DAP legislators voting their conscience, especially at a time when public disquiet over not only land reclamation in Penang but also indiscriminate hillslope clearing is growing.

Apprehension mounting

The apprehension among Penangites over land reclamation and indiscriminate hillslope clearing is mounting, though it is muted because people feel that the DAP-led administration has done a good job overall of governing the state.

A majority know that Lim had done a good job and that, too, in the teeth of a federal government that is more inclined to be adverse to its interests simply because it is opposition-controlled.

But more are waking up to the reality that the state government does not have much by way of originality in tackling the challenges posed by traffic congestion and the need for affordable housing.

On land reclamation, Lim is probably right that more of it has occurred on BN’s watch than under his seven-year-old administration and that if the Umno motion in the state assembly last week had carried, his government would have had to face the dire prospect of bankruptcy incurred from paying compensation to developers of already agreed projects to alleviate traffic congestion.

But this should not prevent legislators with legitimate concerns for the environment from exercising their right to a stand on the issue based on conscience.

A Pakatan Harapan principal ought not to be greatly exercised, as Lim has been, when faced by coalition underlings opting to abstain on a motion, albeit one tabled by the opposition, calling for more introspection on an environmental issue that has grown to such importance these days that even the Pope has pronounced on it.

Even the roman pontiff avoids affecting infallibility on such matters. Why would Lim want to sound ex cathedra?

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.