Monday, January 19, 2009

Pakatan Rakyat, why the people’s choice?

The results of the recently concluded by-elections in the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary seat which gave the victory to the Pakatan Rakyat demonstrated that the people are willing to give the opposition coalition the opportunity to help shape the future of our nation.

The willingness of Pakatan Rakyat to open up its forum and debates its policies, differences as well as seeking public opinions on their policies also prove to be a successful in the eyes of the people, as it shows democracy is practically active and alive in this opposition coalition. The people view such debates and differences as openness, freedom of expression and understanding instead of split as often being labeled by the Barisan Nasional against their opposition counterpart.

The assumption of a closed door meeting of being united and consensus in decision making are something of the old days talk and had gone into history, which were still practically adopted by the Barisan Nasional component parties.

The people were fed up with the closed door policies of the Barisan Nasional and its secrecy in meetings and the ways policies are dictated from behind the doors. People wanted to know, wanted to be part of the policy process, debate and to understand the contents prior to its implementations or enforcements. In other words people wanted to see competency, transparency and accountability in all policies decided and undertaken by the government in order to move the entire nation forward and not backward.

The openness of the Pakatan Rakyat forum as shown in the most recent events proves that this is what the people want. The people wanted to see if their leaders are performing, fighting for them, going for them, following up for them, near to them, speak for them, act for them, do for them, implement for them and make them part of the decision making and policies implementations as well.

The people of today are different from those in the 80s and 90s of which the Barisan Nasional is still in with. The people of today are more informed, learned and knowledgeable in wanting to get to know not only if the government is really doing something for them but if the policies and implementations are carried out in a proper and lawful manner, with competency, transparency, accountability instead of doing any work in secrecy, in a corrupt manner, back door deals, cronyism, nepotism, under-table manner and so on.

In the people’s word and the people’s demand, they wanted to know where the income taxes which they have been paying, goes to. They wanted to know if their income taxes really funded the development and channeled to the people who really need them or if these monies end up in the pockets of the ruling elites or those who were closely link to the ruling elites (like the Barisan Nasional). The basic word here is the Truth.

We can see in every election campaign, the Barisan Nasional will always emphasize on development, businesses opportunities, high rise buildings, economic development and so on, but the people had send them the clear message: we know you are doing this and that, but we also want to know how you did it!

Anyway, the Barisan Nasional will continue to always emphasize on development, businesses opportunities, high rise buildings, economic development and so on, as they are still in a denial mode. They refuse to accept the will of the people and that the mindset and demands of the people had changed.

In order to stay on, the Barisan Nasional will also continue to play with their racial cards, divide and rule policies amongst its coalition partners and outside the coalition as well.

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