They should have left it alone rather than try to hide the Chinese prominence in Pakatan Harapan, and instead ended up proving it is Pakatan Ali Baba after all, because what the Malays hate worse than Chinese-domination is an Ali Baba arrangement. Malays who Ali Baba themselves to Chinese are looked down upon as pariahs of Malay society. So now the Malay partners of DAP, in particular Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, are seen as pariahs who are Ali Baba-ing themselves to DAP.
THE CORRIDORS OF POWER
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Lim Kit Siang says the next general election is about democracy versus kleptocracy. If that is true then he and Pakatan Harapan would not touch Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad with a ten-foot pole because it was Mahathir who turned kleptocracy into an art form and who killed democracy and said democracy cannot work in Malaysia while only ‘guided democracy’ can.
The next general election is actually about DAP versus Umno. It is about a DAP-led Pakatan Harapan versus an Umno-led Barisan Nasional. It is about Chinese political power versus Malay political power.
The government critics say Umno on its own cannot form the federal government. They say at best Umno can win between 90 to 100 parliament seats and they need not less than 112 seats to retain Putrajaya. Hence Umno needs its friends in Barisan Nasional for those additional seats.
That is very true and Umno does not pretend it is not. And that was the reason why Parti Perikatan (the Alliance Party of Umno, MCA and MIC) was formed to face the 1955 elections and then Barisan Nasional in 1973 to face the 1974 general election. Umno knows on its own it cannot form the federal government and that it needs partners based on a power-sharing formula to stay in power.
And the same goes for Pakatan Harapan. Pakatan Harapan needs to be a mirror-image of Barisan Nasional but with one difference. And that one difference is: while Umno is the lead partner in Barisan Nasional, DAP is the lead partner in Pakatan Harapan.
DAP, however, cannot allow that point to be played up. Having Umno as the lead partner in Barisan Nasional is okay because Umno is Malay and the Malays are the majority. But DAP is Chinese so that would make Pakatan Harapan Chinese-dominated and the Chinese are the minority and at best can give Pakatan Harapan 55 seats compared to the 100 or so Malay seats that Umno can get.
And that was why they tried to hide the Chinese-dominance in the recent Pakatan Harapan leadership lineup by creating the impression that the Pakatan Harapan leadership lineup is Malay-heavy. But that just made it worse. Instead it gave the impression that Pakatan Harapan is Pakatan Ali Baba. So the solution became worse than the problem.
READ: Pakatan Ali Baba Is Hurting Kit Siang Bad
They should have left it alone rather than try to hide the Chinese prominence in Pakatan Harapan, and instead ended up proving it is Pakatan Ali Baba after all, because what the Malays hate worse than Chinese-domination is an Ali Baba arrangement. Malays who Ali Baba themselves to Chinese are looked down upon as pariahs of Malay society. So now the Malay partners of DAP, in particular Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, are seen as pariahs who are Ali Baba-ing themselves to DAP.
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