Raja Petra: People Only Vote for Pakatan Out of Hate for BN

How do you feel about Pakatan Rakyat as far as its strengths and weaknesses are concerned? What do they need to do to win the next election? Do they have a fighting chance?

Pakatan Rakyat has its fighting chance only as far as the people‘s hatred for Barisan Nasional continues. People vote for Pakatan Rakyat not out of love for Pakatan Rakyat. People vote for Pakatan Rakyat out of hate for Barisan Nasional. So if there’s any relationship between the voters and Pakatan Rakyat this relationship is merely the unity of hate not the unity of love. Now if the people voted for Pakatan Rakyat because the love of Pakatan Rakayat than I’d say Pakatan Rakayat have a solid future. But they vote Pakatan Rakayat only because they do not want Barisan Nasional, in particular Umno – “ABU” – “Anything But Umno”, “Asalkan Bukan Umno”.

So as long as Umno or Barisan Nasional continues make mistakes, the people should support Pakatan Rakyat. They support Pakatan Rakyat because they don’t want Barisan or Umno. That’s all. If Umno reforms or if Pakatan Rakyat reforms, then there’s no longer the need to support or vote Pakatan Rakyat out of hate. But fortunately, for the opposition, Umno and Barisan continue to make mistakes. Because they continue to make mistakes, people will continue to support Pakatan Rakyat. But that’s a very dangerous relationship. Relationship built on hate rather than on love. So, if we have a common enemy, then we shall certainly unite.

I always use the example of Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban hate each other and they fight with each other. But as long as they have a common enemy, and in this case the common enemy was Russia, then they would unite. They unite because of a common enemy which is Russia. And because they were united, the Taliban were able to defeat Russia. But as soon as Russia was defeated, the Taliban went back to fighting each other.

So, today the Taliban are fighting each other again because there is no Russia. So even enemies of many generations, the tribes, different tribes of Afghanistan and Taliban and all, even though there have been enemies for many generations as long as they perceive there’s a common enemy, they’ll unite. The same goes with Pakatan Rakyat. The three parties in Pakatan Rakyat, as well as the voters, they are united because they oppose against one enemy which is Umno. What will happen when one day Umno no longer becomes the enemy, or if Umno reforms, or if Barisan Nasional reforms? That would be a very dangerous period for Pakatan Rakyat. The way I see it, Umno and Barisan will never reform, not for a long time to come. So because of that, Pakatan Rakyat has still solid future.




This is the Part 2 of Malaysian Digest interview with RPK...to read the rest of the onterview please go to this address: http://malaysiandigest.com/features/12049-people-only-vote-for-pakatan-out-of-hate-for-bn.html