PERAK = SILVER. SILVER LINING OR SILVER PIECES.

POLLYANA’s POINT IN OUR PRESENT STRAITS

The dread Barisan Rakyat bloggers felt late Tuesday when rumor mills churned with word of impending defections in Perak from Pakatan Rakyat to Barisan Nasional gradually gave way in me to a search for a silver lining in the cloud. I remember when I was a child being taught the lesson of Pollyanna, the story about an orphan sent to live with a stern aunt. It was a heart-tugging book whose point was that we should look for something to be glad about whenever the bad happens. There were times in later years when I mused that Pollyanna’s was the classic loser’s attitude – consoling oneself when resigned to one’s defeat.

Past the age of fifty, when I began to yield to the view that many things in life – for example, your children’s choices on careers and spouses – are quite beyond your ability to control, I relooked the worth of Pollyanna. There’s no point in being a control freak. What will be will be. Que sera sera. Hence make the best of any situation.

Pollyanna’s attitude welled up in me late Tuesday, early Wednesday when news portals suggested the goings-on in Perak were moving rapidly to a denouement damaging to Pakatan. I checked the impulse to denounce defections. I could not have been in favor of it before September 16 and then denounce it in February when the boot was on the other foot. Mind you I was certain that had the much-trumpeted defections to Pakatan occurred, there would be a general election within a year as voters would need to endorse the new government. Otherwise a ruling coalition composed of many defectors would strain – in vain -- after credibility. Dang! Better to go back to the rakyat for re-endorsement than to limp along with quislings (no varnishing this) in tow.

Now after watching the evening news broadcasts showing Najib intending to seek an audience with Sultan Azlan on Thursday morning to inform that BN had the majority to form a new government, I checked the euphoric hope that His Royal Highness would accede to Pakatan Menteri Besar Nizar’s request for dissolution of the Perak state assembly despite my view that that was the best thing to do. A new government with a wafer thin majority made possible by defections, one of revolving door quality, is not worth the paper it is certified on, unless of course it goes to the polls soon. Frankly, based on past form, I felt I couldn’t expect Sultan Azlan to refuse Najib’s request. I recalled the hope when he became Agong in 1989 that he would check the authoritarian Dr Mahathir’s slide to a dictated democracy.

Hope, they say, is a good breakfast but a lean supper. Some of us breakfasted on hope at the onset of Sultan Azlan’s kingship and – despite glowing statements on the ideals of democratic governance from him and son Nazrin in the intervening years between the end of his kingship and resumption of rulership of Perak – hope is lean that HRH will decide in favor of dissolution. There is that gulf between profession and performance. It is easy to profess ideals; it is hard to live up to them.

Which brings me to the Pollyanna point: From to time before the September 16 episode, we heard that one Pakatan component would not be in favor of a new government formed after defections from BN if it meant the majority of legislators do not belong to one religious confession. This was a narrow stance, insupportable on several counts. But none of us pretends that the change in Malaysian politics we are fighting for could be achieved without the support of people, some of whose views themselves need reworking. We felt hard realities, experienced in the struggle for change, would do the job of reworking.

What in the four defections seen in Perak could help do the presumed task of reworking among Pakatan cohort ? Look at the confessions of three of the four defectors. I reject the view that I am casting a slur of any religion when I say that mere religious profession is no guarantee of virtuous performance. For me, if there is one thing to be glad about this whole sorry episode in Perak, it is that it will give pause to proponents of the view that a Pakatan federal government must be composed of a majority confession.

I assert this view even in the face of that commendable example of the Kelantan state government holding steady from 2004 to ’08 under the redoubtable Tok Guru’s leadership despite holding the barest of majorities -- one seat. That example does not furnish sufficient grounds for saying that belonging to a one religious confession under a particular party is a guarantee of integrity.