COMMENT If Pakatan Harapan does not adopt a different approach to intra-coalition squabbles to the one playing out in the contretemps in Penang between DAP and PKR, they would have less cause to claim they have a superior model of governance to the ruling Umno-BN.

An understanding on this new approach is important because there are going to be disagreements among partners of the coalition over policy and decisions by the executive, especially in states governed by the coalition.

If these are not handled better than the way it is being handled in the present controversy in Penang, the public would have to conclude that Harapan is not going to be a more cohesive coalition than predecessor Pakatan Rakyat was.

More than ever now Harapan will have to work out an understanding among its component parties on how to manage intra-coalition squabbles.

The ructions in Umno on how the party is handling internal disputes arising from clashing opinions among leaders and members over Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s deportment on the 1MDB issue and the matter of the RM2.6 billion donation into his personal bank accounts have thrown this issue of dispute management into sharp relief.

Harapan must display a better model of internal dispute management as otherwise it cannot claim its model of governance is superior.

In Penang, the core of the problem lies in the absence of meetings on policy and practice at the state level between leaders of Harapan parties.

If there are no such periodic meetings or if these are held but infrequently, then a common understanding of what are the problems facing the coalition would be that much harder to achieve.

The dissemination of information about these problems would be difficult to spread among the membership of the parties and hence decisions that may be made by the executive would be little understood and supported.

In the informational void squabbles can easily arise and absent a better way of managing them, it would be no surprise that a dispute such as the one currently bedevilling the coalition in Penang would occur.

Besides regular state level meetings among coalition leaders to discuss policy and executive decisions, there must be a new maturity with respect to handling differences of opinion.

Harapan affects to be a more liberal-minded coalition than rivals Umno-BN. Therefore there must be more liberalism towards a human staple: differing, even conflicting, opinions among leaders and members on policy and practice.

True, discipline in the exercise of the right to dissent must be emphasised but there is no need to get unduly worked up by the flare-ups that would occur whenever some have become exuberant in the expression of their dissent.

A coalition can’t be ruled by a single set of vocal chords

It must be borne in mind that a coalition, leave alone an individual party, cannot be ruled by a single set of vocal chords.

That said, the dispute currently flaring between DAP and PKR over the decision by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to sack two PKR state assembly reps from their positions in government-linked companies because they had abstained on a Umno motion in the legislature last November to halt land reclamation has become unduly magnified.

The abstention of the two PKR reps, together with another three colleagues who were joined by one DAP rep, could have been handled in a more mature way than it was.

Land reclamation and hillslope residential development is a matter of growing disquiet in Penang. To pretend otherwise is adopt an ostrich-like attitude.

The abstention of the five PKR members on the Umno motion, especially after it became known that a huge area off the south-eastern coast of the island, was slated for land reclamation under a transport master plan, was a reaction to this mounting anxiety over what similar and already approved projects have done to the island’s prized seaview.

To expect that there would be no reaction would be to take a dim view of the environmental and social consciousness of Penang’s elected representatives.

The decision to abstain was a credit to this consciosuness. Realism and maturity would have properly recognised it as such.

A Pakatan Harapan worth its salt would sooner forget the matter and move on than magnify a tempest in a teacup into something bigger and sinister.

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.