NOV 13 — Datuk Zaid Ibrahim is many things to different people but they can all agree on some things about him. Blunt. Outspoken. A loose cannon.
Ask anyone in Umno. Or PKR. Agree or disagree with him, they all agree he doesn't mince his words.
Well, not if you are a boy from Kelantan who made good and built up your law firm into the largest partnership in the country, spreading wings abroad and then leaving it all behind for a political career.
The lawyer-turned-politician was under no illusions of a rosier future when he joined Umno and later PKR and as he blogged today, he isn't a leader like the big chiefs of PKR, DAP and PAS.
But Zaid has a quality that they might have forgotten after being on top of the pile for so long. He sees things as they are and says it as it is.
And years from now, they will thank him for bringing that kind of clarity to what they should do as a political coalition. That is, to serve the people, not their vested interests or illusions of great leadership to take the country into a golden future.
He plainly said leaders like Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang and Lim Kit Siang would have to set aside their personal ambitions to make way for whom he thought best to lead the opposition bloc called Pakatan Rakyat Malaysia — Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat.
Zaid's choice of the PAS spiritual leader as the Pakatan chairman is similar to whom many youths expressed support in Election 2008. The goateed cleric, who this week celebrates 19 years as Kelantan Mentri Besar, is by far seen as the cleanest politician in Malaysia.
Notwithstanding current allegations of being sponsored for this year's Haj pilgrimage which Nik Aziz has cancelled to show he cannot be bribed by anyone.
More importantly, Zaid is prodding the three parties that make up Pakatan to come together closer, acidly noting that they have not even mentioned or welcome the application to register the bloc — which he said is significant as it is the first legal entity for the three parties.
The three parties had come together in Barisan Alternatif electoral pact in the 1999 elections but that blew up spectacularly two years later over DAP-PAS differences on the subject of an Islamic state.
But this time, it’s different. And Zaid writes that it can only be different if the leaders put aside the vested interests of their parties and personal ambitions for the sake of the people who had voted for them and will vote for them in future elections.
Perhaps, that is why the trio have been cool to the application to formalise the bloc. They have had it for so long to criticise others that the art of compromise for a common goal — the people's welfare and future — is lost on them.
Zaid, however, is providing the reality check for them. He is asking them to consider the future of Malaysia and make sacrifices by coming together as a coalition and working for the people, not themselves.
"If the leaders are still stubborn, the people will punish us in the next general election," Zaid wrote today.
Barisan Nasional never took Zaid's advice. It is not too late for Pakatan to heed his words.
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
