In reality the idea of MCLM THIRD FORCE was born during Good Drinking Session

MCLM

IS THE

THIRD FORCE?

IT IS

Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) the blogger now-in-exile in Britain has been writing some articles highly critical of Parti Keadilan Rakyat, especially regarding its de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, but I tempered my concern with giving benefit of the doubt to the blogger now resident abroad that he might have been misinformed or disinformed by his cronies back home including civil rights lawyer-cum-blogger Haris Ibrahim.

The knives are out for Anwar - Umno offers big money for his scalp more money to get drunk bro

Haris as saying the third force -- now birthing as Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) in London -- had identified some 30 men/women of integrity to stand as candidates in GE13, and some 20 had agreed to stand, and they would want DAP and PKR to allow these candiadtes to stand under their party banner, according to a Star report dated Nov 17, 2010. I had questioned why would these well established parties with their own selection criteria privatise such an important role to outside parties. This stance was also restated by leaders like PKR strategy director Tian Chua besides Dr Syed Husin.

This Third Force is neither third nor force, according to just retired PKR deputy president Dr Syed Husin Ali. In fact he sarcastically shared at a mew conference in conjunction with recent party Congress a "revealing" episode, relating that preceding the March 2008 elections, a representation was made to him to allow a Third Force candidate to stand under PKR banner. Syed Husin knew of this "guy" candidate quite well, so he told off the backers that they should have done a thorough background check and would have found that their nominee was a regular pub-goer who often ended up drunk.

By StraightTalking

Lately I’ve been reading comments from around the blogs; especially comments in Malaysia Today and I find a disturbing trend. Commenters are beginning to use ugly words to describe Pakatan. I won’t repeat them all, but one that is constantly used to disparage Pakatan is to compare it to “a pile of shit”. MY GOD!!! And who encouraged the commenters to use such an unsavory term? RPK.

What the fark has Pakatan done that is so terrible to incur such wrath from RPK and commenters to call them “a pile of shit”. Is Pakatan stealing money from the rakyat? Is Pakatan fanning racial hatred among the rakyat? Is Pakatan dividing the rakyat? Is Pakatan a bunch of corrupted crooks? Is Pakatan a bunch of useless eunuchs? I DON’T THINK SO!!!

True, some MPs turned traitor turned frog in the early days of Pakatan and cost Pakatan to lose Perak. But that does not mean Pakatan had committed a sin. It only committed a mistake for having traitors in their midst! The recent party elections in PKR and DAP were also not sins. In fact, to allow for every member to vote in their leader was a “first” in any political party in Malaysia. It was only a mistake that Pakatan did not anticipate the difficult task of organizing such a massive nation-wide party election with so limited resources and zero experience.

Apart from those two mistakes, all I see are some disagreements now and then. Overall the party’s top level leaders are good, clean and dedicated to serve the rakyat. Aren’t those traits what we want in our leaders? Do we want EVERY Pakatan MP; EVERY Pakatan official; EVERY Pakatan member to be clean, efficient and dedicated before we vote Pakatan? Is that possible? That would be a miracle! And miracles only happen in heaven. There are no miracles on earth. What more do we farking want!

And now, suddenly RPK has decided that Pakatan is no good. In fact his views are that some Pakatan MPs are “not even fit to walk his dog”! I mean what kind of nonsense is this? The self-proclaimed “repairman” now says that MCLM is sent from Heaven to fix things! How wonderful. To add to my thoughts, I’d like to borrow a wise comment made by a reader in MT. He/she says…

“…if MCLM really wants to represent the 'civil liberties' movements, where are the 'unions'? Where are the human rights groups? Where are the NGOs? I don't see them joining the MCLM in droves. If MCLM cannot accept genuine and pure criticism, is it not going to be similar to 'Suhakam', saying the right things but doing the wrong things? Bersih was a better movement by the way! Why not Bersih constituting a massive group under Pakatan and MCLM offering its 'members' as candidates only? The fact that the MCLM refuses the 'orders' from PKR, PAS and DAP and the fact that they fear the leadership of these parties, shows that there is a deep division among the opposition support panels and this will definitely be cannon fodder for the BN to target in the next GE. One last point: The MCLM is being created not at the 'demand' of the people but by the thinking of a group of good intentioned citizens but let me tell you, not all good intents end up in good things!”

I am not 

THE

NEW AGE

RAKYAT!

YAH?

a blind fan of Pakatan. I’ve seen all three movies that are now showing in our cinemas:

MY FOOT

We should not lose sight of the fact that our parliamentary elections send "individuals" to the Dewan Rakyat. That the person who enjoys the confidence of a majority of its members becomes prime minister is a secondary detail.

Tunku ’Abidin Muhriz, Sun Daily

I HAVE been asked my opinion on the "Third Force", even though those to whom the term is applied deny that that is what they are. Competition is usually a good thing: the more choices the end user – in this case, the voter – has, the better.

However, in this case, the availability of choices is problematic to some, since while one might prefer Option A to Option B, the existence of an Option C might reduce the votes for Option A, and thus Option B gets in. This is the argument that some Pakatan Rakyat supporters were citing in opposition to the idea of the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) putting up candidates (although this in itself assumed that three-cornered fights would only have damaged Pakatan Rakyat, which may not be true in every case). Perhaps that objection is now moot, because the MCLM may not want three-cornered fights as a point of policy anyway.

Nonetheless that objection to three-way fights on the basis of "it will help Barisan Nasional" exposed a great deal of sycophancy that seems to afflict the opposition coalition just as badly as the governing coalition. This attitude will do nothing to improve the quality of the chamber. This kind of blind loyalty to the party’s candidate – in practice, the leader’s candidate, given the undemocratic nature of candidate selection – is exactly what leads to a lobotomised Dewan Rakyat in which loyalty is to leaders instead of to principles or constituents. That’s why it’s heartening to note that the MCLM is pressing hard to have candidates revealed early: it isn’t as good as full democratic selection of candidates, but at least it’s more transparent than announcing the candidates on the eve of election (a practice so prevalent that some commentators now advocate proportional representation for our lower house, which could lead to even less democratic practices).

We should not lose sight of the fact that our parliamentary elections send "individuals" to the Dewan Rakyat. That the person who enjoys the confidence of a majority of its members becomes prime minister is a secondary detail. Many people will disagree, but I believe that upgrading the quality and independence of Parliament is even more important than sending "better" people to Putrajaya: a high quality Parliament will be able to contain and expose an arrogant or incompetent executive, and furthermore would have cascading effects in terms of increasing accountability and transparency in other institutions, aside from being more faithful to our founding fathers’ vision of what Parliament should be.

Detractors may say that the executive branch already has in practice supremely more power than the legislative, and so we must therefore change the executive first if we want to empower the legislature. But there is not much point if you are replacing one set of authoritarians with another set of authoritarians. It is too risky simply to trust that the new people will relinquish power from themselves – every Malaysian knows how power can corrupt – therefore, it’s better to have a Parliament that will stand up to the executive, and one way to do that is to fill it with MPs who are less at mercy to top-down power structures.

The blogosphere is rife with comments like "both are devils, but one is less evil than the other". This sad situation has arisen because voters have little power over who the candidates will be. Herein lies the greatest strength of the "Third Force" – these individuals explicitly do not want to form a government, and the term "reluctant politicians" has been coined to describe them – so the campaign forces the parties to think about the individuals they put up. In some cases, the prospect of a "Third Force" candidate contesting may be so unappealing to a political party that they might change their own candidate.

Still, defection must remain an option – particularly when it is party leaders themselves who break their own manifesto commitments. Sycophants who think that their party leaders can do no wrong want to ban party hopping altogether, but the MCLM’s method (in theory at least) is superior: to put forward people who believe in things other than power itself.

However, if they become too strongly affiliated with Pakatan Rakyat, then they risk becoming no more than a faction within it: an internal wing lobbying for its candidates to be chosen. But if they really believe in principles, then they must be courageous enough to fight any and all candidates who don’t chime with them.

Tunku ’Abidin Muhriz is president of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs.