MALAYSIANS’ FAILED EXPERIMENT WITH THE LEFT

, HAS LEFT THEM FEELING CONFUSED AND GUILTY WITH THEMSELVES FOR CAUSING A LOT OF DAMAGE TO THE COUNTRY BY THEIR EXPERIMENT.

By Mansor Puteh

Malaysian voters thought they could give the opposition some trashing in the last general elections of 2 March, 2008 – i.e. by voting them into office and gaining control of some states, so that they could prove to themselves and the whole country how useless they were.

They had been clamoring to rule over the country. Now they were getting the chance.

The voters were not dumb; they knew what they were doing. They wanted the opposition to show everybody how useless they are for the country and also for themselves.

And since then, they have done just this, becoming poor leaders who do not deserve the support of the voters anymore. They were given the opportunity to prove their worth and they blew it.

They blew it right on the first day of them controlling the few states by doing the outrageous.

And they cannot be trusted to continue running those few states. Many of their candidates will lose their deposits in the next general elections.

There is nothing left of the Left in Malaysia. 

The 8 March, 2008 was not really about the Left’s march to Putrajaya. It is a march backwards for the opposition pact, Pakatan Rakyat. They missed the boat; they spoilt the support the voters had tried to give them. But they faltered and they failed to live up to the expectation of those who had wanted to give them a try.

Now they have to wait for years to change their status quo, with only few more weeks or months before it can happen when the thirteenth general elections happen, sometime in April next year.

Pakatan will be trounced back to hibernation and disillusionment. Their senior leaders will lose their seats and maybe even their deposit.

The young ones will slip into oblivion. They were never meant to be in parliament or the state assembly in the first place. They were just lucky to have taken the risk of contesting in the last elections because they were mere fillers.

Some of them had been left in the lurch when their march turned out to be a mere trek backwards, with some who actually had to make stops in the courts.

There’s no harm for Malaysian voters to want to experiment to give the opposition a chance serving them so they can see for themselves how they fare.

They have not done much; their senior officers lack leadership quality. Most, if not all of them are old hats with many who were formerly with Umno and Barisan Nasional.

So how could the voters trust them? They had failed in Umno and Barisan or where thrown out or who had willingly resigned from the party who had given them much.

Yet, they could turn around and curse it.

It is like cursing their own parents if the fall out of favor with them.

The worse culprit must be Anwar who was taken into Umno and Barisan and immediately given a senior post in the cabinet, when the others have to slog their way to the state level before being noticed and put in the national spotlight.

Here, he, Anwar Ibrahim could curse Umno and Barisan like they did not mean anything at all to him.

It was Umno and Barisan’s prerogative on where he ought to be and he could not dictate them on how he wants them to serve him.

His and his friends’ cause or causes are lost causes. They are just disgruntled individuals who think they are still young and who can serve the voters and Malaysians.

But did they serve them when they were in the government? One doubts it.

Pakatan will be trounced in the next general elections simply because the voters who had given the opportunity to serve them were frustrated. They now know better who to vote for.

It won’t be shocking if even Nik Aziz loses in the elections.

If the and the other senior officers of PAS, DAP and Pakatan KeAdilan Rakyat lose, too, I am sure all of them will cry foul.

One of their gripes is the ‘phantom voters’.

But don’t they realize that such ‘phantom voters’ if they truly exist, had also ‘voted’ for them as many of them are said to be found in the states their parties had won.

If indeed there such voters, then surely nobody in Pakatan could win any seat at all. After all what’s the use for anyone to place ‘phantom voters’ if they do not serve the real cause, but the opposition?

Winning the few states and the many seats in parliament and the state assemblies have brought the worse from the opposition.

The voters have been observing their antics, listening to their speeches and the controversies they created for themselves, all of which spell doom for them, for the voters are the ones who will determine if they will be voted in again.

Few of them will be, but for the rest, it will be the end of the road for them in politics. They will be the angry and confused people. They are not leaders. They are not politicians. They are mere individuals who do not have other things to do with their lives.

Many are stuck where they are in Pakatan because they have found that they could not use Umno and Barisan anymore.

The experiment of 8 March 2008 has taught a valuable lesson for many voters in Malaysia, who can now see the true colors of the people in the opposition especially those in PAS, DAP and also PKR.