OCT 21 — The spat between DAP’s Tony Pua and PKR’s Sivarasa Rasiah over a seemingly ‘small’ issue involving temporary stalls for the upcoming Deepavali celebrations has been quite an attention grabber with numerous press statements given by both parties.

On one hand, Pua alleges that the Petaling Jaya mayor did not act in accordance with the law when he rescinded the council’s decision to move the stalls to a more appropriate place and that the whole decision reeked of ‘crony politics’.

On the other, Sivarasa simply said the issue should be discussed behind closed doors and resolved based on a decision made by the majority of the councillors.

Firstly, I would like to point out that Sivarasa’s statement reeked of double standards for one simple reason: if Pakatan politicians can call out Barisan politicians on a whole list of governance issues and demand that the issue be resolved in public (ex. 1MDB, NFC) , then Pakatan should do the same.

In that regard, I have to commend Pua and his comrade Lau Weng San, the Kampung Tunku assemblyperson. Lau actually wrote a report (posted on his Facebook page) on what transpired within the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) and explained how a legally endorsed council decision was overturned by the PJ mayor without going through due process.

But the explanation also left the issue hanging. Despite admitting that the issue set a very bad precedence and sent all the wrong signals to the public, all Lau said at the end of his statement was that he distanced himself from it. It is as if the case has been slapped with a “No Further Action” stamp and closed because it is deemed inappropriate to take action against one’s own government.

If even small matters like involving hawker locations can be deemed ‘resolved’ in such a manner, would bigger issues not be similarly ‘resolved’? I ask because I had, back in May, pointed out that a major MBPJ development project (the one-way loop) was being implemented without any detailed construction plans, yet somehow had a budget of RM23.8 million.

How does a project with no plans get a budget? What are the contractors being paid to do? How can the auditors ensure that the project is being implemented according to specifications if there are no plans? These are not very difficult questions to answer, yet they have not been answered till today even though I repeated the questions just a week and a half ago in The Star.

So all this begs a final question; how can the rakyat expect Pakatan politicians to weed out corrupt practices from within their own ranks when there is a credibility issue here?