The People’s Parliament

My friend, Wong Chin Huat, shares his thoughts on how we might go about denying BN a 2/3 majority in Parliament.

“If you really want to deny BN its parliamentary two-thirds, you must know how the system works.

First thing first, an effective one-third means 75 seats (actually74 seats plus one, otherwise BN will still retain its exact two-third) because next parliament will have 222 seats in total.”

To read Chin Huat’s full take, please click HERE.

I was asked at the 11th hour to speak at the DAP organised forum last Friday at the Chinese Assembly Hall entitled ‘ “ISA arrests of Hindraf 5 – Ops Lalang2 coming?”

I agreed to speak as I was given to understand that otherwise, there would not be any civil society voice on the panel, the others all being DAP speakers, and I felt it was important to lend a civil society voice to this very pressing issue.

Other panellists included DAP leaders Lim Kit Siang, Lim Guan Eng, Fong Kui Lun, Loke Siew Fook, M Kulasegaran,  A Sivanesan, Teresa Kok and Dr Tan Seng Giaw whilst Tony Pua chaired the forum.

You can read a report of the forum in Malaysiakini HERE.

For me, the forum fortified a view I have increasingly come to hold : that we, you and I, and all of civil society, and not the political parties, BN or opposition, have to take the lead in bringing an end to race-based politics in this country.

I was shocked and gravely disappointed to see and hear DAP leaders at the forum play and manipulate the race card by harping on the issue of marginalised Indians simply because the audience in the hall was almost 80% Indians.

I was most disheartened when I heard Kula refer to the Indians in the audience as his ‘countrymen’.

Kula, am I not your countryman?

Were the non-Indians in the audience not your countrymen? 

Were we not there to discuss the likelihood of a second Ops Lalang? Or was this staged just to enable DAP to draw an Indian audience?

If UMNO and BN are using the Hindraf rally and the aftermath to stir up Malay sentiment for their own political mileage, DAP demonstrated last Friday that they are not averse to use the same to play the race card, albeit slanted differently.

I have had enough of race-based politics, whether BN or opposition led.

If we are to have a chance to end this raced-based divide and rule, you and I, civil society must take the lead.

And we must take the lead now.

We must take the lead to give direction to the political parties.

BN will not listen.

The opposition parties must now heed our call.