I suppose it’s true that good things come to those who wait. I’m sure hidden in that adage are several supplementary ones, like: “what goes around comes around”, and “give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves”, and others. For the past few weeks, I’ve been keeping one eye on the news and another on the work front, and what I’ve seen on the news sort of confirms to me what needs to be done.
As long as BN holds the reigns of power, there can be no clear path toward media freedom and the abolishing of draconian emergency laws. It’s about control, I suppose, and the threat of losing control can drive some people mad - particularly those on the losing end. So I bore witness to the blitz of nice-sounding concessions from the government. Apologies for Tun Salleh Abbas, admission that something is wrong with the judiciary, more Badawi-speak about doing things and yet more silence in the news about action. What’s worse, the same sort of police brutality and suspicion about protests even in states where BN supposedly doesn’t hold sway.
I mean, that’s how entrenched BN culture is in the civil service. The civil service just can’t be divorced from BN because the intricate network of “government men” loyal to the ruling party hasn’t been removed. Top civil servants are government appointees, and there are hordes of similar bureaucrats waiting in line to take over vacant positions, these bureaucrats who know which side of the bread is buttered - moving one’s allegiances away from the ruling coalition is asking for an early retirement, or worse: cold storage.
DSAI had the initiative, if not the numbers, to change things around - and this is what really irks me about the whole party-hopping thing: once again, the opposition had BN on the defense and they let it slip. If DSAI had the numbers to form a new government he should’ve acted and moved decisively. If he didn’t have the numbers, he shouldn’t be talking about defections. Why scare a wolf into a corner? All those reports about having sufficient numbers to challenge the coalition’s hold on power should’ve been translated into a decisive move to wrest the reigns of power from the BN government - and then talk only after it’s been done.
I don’t know: maybe there were other considerations behind the scene, but to me it just looks like both weakness and an admission that the opposition’s contentions were more bluff than based on hard facts. Christ, what a mess. I’m sure quite a number of PKR members (formerly BN and UMNO members, some of them) would have understood just how far-reaching BN’s power extended. BN, because it holds the huge bulk of resources, can fight multiple fires.
The ball’s in Pakatan’s court now, I suppose.