AUGUST 13 — Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim (TSKI)’s embonpoint thumbs-up to the cameras after leaving His Royal Highness (HRH) of Selangor’s Palace remains one of the most iconic photos in this Selangor saga. As we have later found out, TSKI had attained the consent of HRH to continue as Menteri Besar (MB) of Selangor, with the confidence of the majority of the Selangor State Assembly.

Since all PKR and DAP Selangor state assemblypersons have made it explicitly clear that they do not support TSKI (and this was reaffirmed at the press conference at PKR HQ, August 12), TSKI’s “confidence of the majority” could only be made up of Umno’s 12 state assemblypersons and 15 of PAS’s assemblypersons. Together with TSKI — now an independent candidate after PKR sacked him — the majority is 28 against the 27 assemblypersons of the remaining Pakatan Rakyat, i.e. 13 PKR assemblypersons and 14 DAP assemblypersons since Hannah Yeoh would not be able to cast her vote since she has to maintain her impartial role as the Speaker of the Assembly.

So it is 28 against 27 — these were the numbers TSKI most likely presented to HRH, since PKR and DAP are “absolutely certain” that they had no possible “traitors” from their own camp willing to defect from the parties.

The most silent group in this scenario appears not to be BN assemblypersons though. Following Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s announcement of the full public support from the 12 BN assemblypersons towards TSKI, the question remains on where the PAS assemblypersons stand.

The sacked Khalid vengefully sacks six others

Yesterday, TSKI greeted the crisis with another dramatic blow, by an authoritarian, unethical, and irrational sacking of the six out of 10 executive councils. This places further doubts on whether PAS had effectively gone to the other side of the divide. This is because the four remaining EXCOs that came from PAS were not sacked but retained, and the sacked ones were members of PKR and DAP respectively. Qualms were compounded and emotions enraged when rumours circulated heavily that PAS had sold Pakatan Rakyat (PR) out and could possibly return the resource-rich Selangor state back to the bad boys of BN.

What awaits the transition are the appointments of a few BN and a few PAS assemblypersons as EXCO members, and there you have it: BN back in power.

If that is essentially the situation at present, with TSKI potentially leading one of the greatest frauds in Malaysia’s political history, DAP and PKR are on the downside with only 27 votes — unable to remove TSKI by a vote of no-confidence.

The legal precedent set from the controversial case of Dato’ Seri Ir Hj Mohammad Nizar bin Jamaluddin v. Dato’ Dr Zambry bin Abd Kadir allows for the vote of no-confidence to be determined by other means than a vote at the legislature. This translates to therefore, to “save Selangor”, the state of Selangor will depend on the remaining PAS Selangor assemblypersons to publicly show their support for Pakatan Rakyat, and stand in solidarity to denounce and stand in no-confidence for TSKI continuing as MB of Selangor.

A plea to PAS Selangor Assemblypersons

So where does PAS assemblypersons stand on this? Is it true, as TSKI claimed, that you are in support of him?

In your consideration of this momentous decision, this is a plea — a stern and insistent one — to all PAS Selangor assemblypersons for you as public office holders to acknowledge the potential abyss Selangor is sinking into and remember the trust from the votes Selangorians have cast in you.

Without the support of PAS Selangor assemblypersons to state their no-confidence towards TSKI, what Selangor will be facing is a two-thirds state seat majority, together with 60 per cent of overall popular votes given to Pakatan Rakyat’s agenda and ideals, effectively be returned to BN government, one which Selangorians have voted to denounce.

Make no mistake, many of the non-Malay votes (deciders in many cases) that were cast to PAS in Selangor were only cast because PAS is part of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition and the promises were more attractive and desirable to them than the BN opponent. It is very unconvincing for PAS to imagine that the votes were attained on their own accord because of the “re-imaging and re-packaging” process PAS believes it has undergone that made them more moderate and therefore acceptable to non-Malay voters. This is rarely the case. In fact, many non-Malay votes will not be given to PAS had PAS not been part of the PR coalition.

Anti-Barisan Nasional campaign

Part of the coalition’s political campaigns was also largely effective from drawing criticisms from BN’s overall incompetent style of administration over the years, which delineates a perfect “anti-BN” picture. Despite having little experiences in administering a state and a nation compared to BN, Selangorians were willing to cast their votes and trust to PR, as long as it was not BN that governed them.

“Asalkan Bukan Umno (ABU)” became a slogan that represented the extent of the distaste people in Selangor have for BN government. It gained much popularity as it resonates with public grievances of BN’s governance filled with corruption, incompetence and abuse of power.

Selangorians are credited for its far-thinking capacity and the ability to dissect information more extensively through different channels of social media, and they chose convincingly that they had had enough of the corrupted and bigoted BN government in Selangor. Khir Toyo brings back nightmares for them.

Therefore, by agreeing to give confidence and be part of the “majority” TSKI claims was behind him supporting, is a blatant U-turn from the public vote given to PAS as part of PR. When Selangorians have voted convincingly to ensure the state is not governed by BN, PAS would now risk returning the powers to BN — which PAS pledged to prevent — through the back door.

Two core promises were instantly shattered: (a) PAS doesn’t allow the ideals of Pakatan Rakyat to be actualised by joining forces with BN to govern the state; and (b) giving a state away to an entity that 60 per cent of the votes and two-thirds of the state seats sought to prevent is an outright betrayal.

Ordeal among PAS leadership

However, the party leadership of PAS gives us a bleaker picture than we would imagine. The more liberal group within PAS like Khalid Samad and Dr Dzul appears to recognise the importance of removing TSKI — an MB with dubious integrity record who insists on staying in power in spite of all circumstances. However, the more conservative group within PAS like the president Hadi Awang and former leader Nik Aziz notably carries on with their support for TSKI. The unfortunate state of affairs is that the conservative groups led by Hadi Awang holds a substantial amount of decision-making power, and he would expect PAS Selangor assemblypersons to toe the party line.

In spite of this acknowledgement, I plea for PAS Selangor assemblypersons to see the Pakatan Rakyat cause as one that is bigger than that of the party’s in this case. This is because PAS’s support for TSKI would risk one of the most embarrassing and undemocratic practices of putting the voters’ votes into meaningless disuse.

When situations require one to look at the bigger picture — the cause and struggle in Pakatan Rakyat — one would sometimes require the use of defiance.

Defiance under extraordinary circumstances

Defiance is quintessential when a successful political defiance campaign is the only way to strengthen the resistance and to disrupt the areas where a dictatorship in TSKI is expending his arrogant use of powers sporadically. TSKI’s dictatorial expansion of powers and BN’s orchestration of wrestling back a state through the back door like what they did in Perak crisis 2009 is dependent on the support and cooperation of PAS assemblypersons. Therefore, such political defiance would be effective until we are able to escalate the freedom of the democratic space on behalf of Selangorians who have given the full and overwhelming mandate to PR, and not BN-PAS.

An instance of successful defiance is The Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws in 1951 by the African National Congress, which acknowledges the need to politically defy when there will be a perpetual subjection of unjust treatment and misery of a vast section of the population. Defiance becomes imperative.

Mahatma Gandhi’s wave of civil disobedience against Salt laws set by the British colonial system inspired many other insurgents like Martin Luther King to rethink their strategy against unfair abuse of power.

Political defiance

Political defiance within a party is commendable if the defiance will lead to a prospectively better outcome for the people and is one that deals with the fundamental regard of the democratic system.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America witnessed such heroic gestures of defiance in the pursuit of the greater good. On January 31 of 1865, the Congress was able to pass a vote for the amendment by a vote of 119 to 56 (satisfying a two-thirds majority). This was only possible with the support of Democrats like James Brooks, Reverdy Johnson, and Tammany Hall, who refused to toe the party line, in a laudable act of defiance in the pursuit of a greater good.

The greater good in that case was that they were able to make certain Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to abolish slavery.

This is precisely the degree of political defiance we call upon PAS assemblypersons to take. The greater good is to ensure the political mandate attained from Selangorians in GE13 is preserved, and not lost humiliatingly to BN — a coalition PR and you as individual assemblyperson pledged to oust as long as it is possible.

The Whip system

Additionally, I do recognise the other hurdle that needs to be crossed: the whip system. Must PAS assemblypersons toe the party line because of the whip system, and vote confidence for TSKI?

The whip system is one that can be made allowance for (i.e. defied) when political circumstances require them to take a particular single issue very seriously, or if there is a mass revolt, or the issue is one that relates to the conscience of a person, like UK’s Iain Duncan-Smith’s case.

More and more in the UK (in which system we follow closely), David Cameron in his 2009 Fixing Broken Politics speech, acknowledged the importance of reducing whipping system in the House and encourage more independent thinking among candidates.

Bill Cash, an MP in UK’s House of Commons, said that the MPs now rebel against the government and refuse to abide the whip system when the government is not the ones that they were elected to represent.

Very similarly in this case, PAS assemblypersons should rebel against a BN-PAS potential government of Selangor purely on the reason that it was not the government Selangorians have sought the PR assemblypersons to represent. In other words, Selangorians did not vote PAS assemblypersons to represent a BN-PAS government, and it is unethical and undemocratic to do so.

In Malaysia, Shahrir Abdul Samad’s refusal to toe the party whip line and supported a motion brought by then Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang in 2006 also showed that there is precedent for defiance of the whip system when it is the right, moral and conscience thing to do so.

The last ditch of hope in Pakatan Rakyat

It is imperative therefore that we also seek meaning in one person being an assemblyperson, and the meaning is not blindly toeing the line of the whip system when toeing the whip decision means detrimental impacts to the democratic mandate of Selangor.

Winston Churchill once said, “Your first duty is to your countrymen, your second duty is to your constituents, and only in the third instance is your duty to your party’s policy and programme”.

Here is the plea to PAS Selangor assemblypersons: please show your support for the cause that Pakatan Rakyat carries and fulfill your promise to the people of not bringing Selangor to the giants of BN. It is your obligation to ensure PR governs Selangor and PR only — pursuant to GE13’s results — and your obligation can only be fulfilled if you stand in solidarity in a no-confidence against TSKI as MB of Selangor.

The last hope lies in the hearts of you as PAS assemblypersons, and it is never too late to take that leap of political defiance when so needed. It is your pick on whether you want to see Pakatan Rakyat have a chance of succeeding or not, because, realistically, there is little chance that PR and its cause will be nationally sustainable if you do not stand on the side of no-confidence against TSKI this time.

The value of political courage

I do acknowledge the reality that it must take immense political courage to make such a public statement. But I do believe that when you pledged to serve as an assemblyperson, you vowed to make sacrifices and take risks when courage is required. Without this, as Martin Luther King noted, “there will come a time when silence becomes betrayal”.

The Westminster system has its defects and it is especially inefficient in gauging voters’ sentiments in times of crisis as this. But we wouldn’t be wrong to say that the least we can do in acknowledging the voters’ voice is to not give the state back to a faction (BN) that two-thirds and 60 per cent popular votes pledged not to bow down to.

Picking principles of PR — and the visions that you share with the world when you campaigned all over the nation — over short-term promises, favours or threats, are always the noblest choice a politician in public office. Politicians in Malaysia are always ridiculed and treated sometimes unfairly, but there are moments like this that politicians could remind themselves of the underlying meaning of why being one matters. Strong people do not compromise, and principles should never be compromised.

Dissenters are going to be aplenty when you take such a stride — it might even grow unpopular among your peers. We must be reminded, however, that successfully changing a system is never easy, more often than not the changing part is the easiest, whereas actualising the ideals is the most difficult part. The least you can do is to be honest with that struggle and stay with it with a clear conscience.

Spread the word, we need you now, PAS assemblypersons.

* James Chai is a first-year law student.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online.