The Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, stung as never before,
threatens to sue PAS for character assassination, accuses it of blowing
out of proportion his taunting of the PAS crowd with obscene signs at
them. Does PAS not know that "I have done a lot for the people,
especially the poor and single mothers"? PAS does this, no doubt,
because they are jealous of his achievements, which presumably gives him
the right, in the true spirit of democracy, to do what he did. In the
video clip of the incident, distributed widely on the Internet, the
embarassment of his aides, tugging at his arms discreetly, is so clear
that Dato' Seri Adnan does not have a leg to stand on in his defence.
But the National Front condones it. The deputy prime minister, Dato'
Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, believes such behaviour is correct. Prof.
Shahnon Ahmad, now a PAS membe! r of parliament, only strengthened the
contents of his satirical political novel, SHIT, which caricatured
politics as the human body, and how all good things end up as faeces.
What shocks is the National Front's attempt to regard the incident as
insignificant. But would it have condoned this if it the roles were
reversed?
Despite his unacceptable and provocative actions, Dato' Seri Adnan
insists PAS should take the blame. This is character assassination, he
thunders. His has called in his lawyers, no doubt with a view to a
multimillion ringgit defamation suit. He is outraged that his concern
for the people is sidetracked by his boorish behaviour, which he
insists, is "a small slip on his part" -- as no doubt his beating up of
a PAS member at the Bentong nomination centre for the general elections
last November was. He has todate not apologised, and PAS, as any
opposition party would in the circumstances, takes full advantage of it! .
Besides, in his view, PAS "will deny everything because they are a bunch
of hypocrites." But how could that be when he admits to have shown the
offending signs for what he terms "nasty remarks" like "Hancur Barisan"
and "Mampus Barisan" (destruction and death to the National Front)? If
a political leader can lose his head over a matter of political
semantics at an orderly election procession, can he be trusted in worse
situations?
When the National Front used the Kadazan headress Tengku Razaleigh
Hamzah wore at a function, which the spinmeisters decided was a cross
(when it clearly was not), and splashed all over the country days before
the 1990 general elections, it was considered a coup which sank the
Semangat '46 political party. That, no doubt in Dato' Seri Adnan's
view, a perfectly legitimate reaction. But if he shows obscene signs at
his opponents, and the opposition react as the National Front would have
if the roles ! were reversed, the opposition are hypocrites and deserve to
lose. His claim that it was PAS who started taunting does not hold
water because all the evidence we have is what PAS had videotaped. It
realised, after the Bentong affair, when they did not have videocameras
on hand, that the mentri besar of Pahang would provide issues like this
that would aid their campaigning. And so it proved. Since the National
Front's candidate's involvement in Islamic affairs is highlighted, am I,
as a non-Muslim, to believe it not un-Islamic to show obscene signs as
the mentri besar of Pahang makes a habit of on nomination day to
elections?
M.G.G. Pillai
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
COUNTERBALANCE.ANYWHERE.ANYTIME.ANYBODY.ANYONE.COM
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