Pausing on a two-week tour of the lecture circuit in the United States earlier this week, PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim told a crowd of Malaysian businessmen and professionals in Milpitas, a trendy suburb in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, that while Pakatan Rakyat may fray around the edges, it is resolute at the centre.
“Things may fray around the edges but the centre will hold,” opined the opposition leader to a crowd of about 150 at the Penang Garden Restaurant on the eve of a lecture he was scheduled to deliver at the University of California in Berkeley.
Anwar told a crowd obviously eager to know the reason behind what is seen in some quarters as his blithe indifference to skirmishing among Pakatan’s lesser lights:
“The leadership council in Pakatan is committed to seeing the coalition hold firm against fraying tendencies at the edges. I believe the centre will hold, that things will not fall apart.”
Anwar added that the entire weight of the mainstream media is being used to paint the opposition as fractious and unable to govern.
“It is conveniently forgotten,” asserted Anwar, “that there is not only wide disarray in the ruling coalition’s ranks, there is reason to believe it could also split asunder.”
He iterated there was firm agreement that all major policy decisions be made in the Pakatan leadership council comprising top leaders of the three component parties – PKR, DAP and PAS.
“This is the solder, this is the glue that holds the coalition together,” he emphasised.
“There’s no wavering on this cardinal principle, which is why I’m confident that the centre will hold despite outbursts and skirmishes now and then by individual operatives on the periphery of this coalition,” explained Anwar.
He claimed the ruling BN was governing by the “momentum of the past”.
“But governments not only subsist by momentum of the past, but also by mastery of the present and by projection of credible hope for the future,” observed Anwar.
“The BN is floundering in the face of its current challenges and it cannot project hope for the future,” he remarked.
Riding the wave of change
He said the forces of history were in favour of change in Malaysia and he believed Pakatan was riding that wave of change.
He referred to Japan where the political status quo was long regarded as immutable only for the long reigning Liberal Democratic Party to be swept from power in August after 54 years.
“Why should Malaysia be the exception to a worldwide democratic order of change?” asked Anwar rhetorically of an audience that rose to cheer him at the end of his speech.
The event’s organisers were pleased with the turnout.
William Devabalan, who had worked with Sim Tze Tzin, the PKR assemblyman for Pantai Jerejak (Penang) when the latter worked in recent years as an engineer in the Bay Area, said:
“There has been a lot of excitement since the elections last year among Malaysians living in California. We want to find more ways to be involved in the efforts to bring about change and this is our small way of contributing.”
After dinner, it was agreed that a Keadilan Chapter for Bay Area would be established to corral support from expatriate Malaysians.
Earlier, Anwar spoke after prayers at Muslim Community Association mosque in Santa Clara where he dwelt on themes he has often explored in his travels – that Muslims must engage with the forces of modernity or risk being fossilised by an irrevocable past.
A number of Malaysians also attended the event, including some former students of the International Islamic University in Gombak who had attended lectures given by Anwar when he was president of that institution during a senior stint in the cabinet.
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