Article: Are We Being Fair To Pakatan Rakyat?

By Li Fook Gao
From The Malaysian Insider

NOV 15 – The Pakatan Rakyat (PR) managed to stay afloat for the past 20 months because we gave them enough business to survive.

So, at least they know, we – the people – are the one that give businesses to them. Barisan Nasional (BN), on the other hand, treats us as though we owe it to them to keep them in business.

They think PR was purposely started by a certain few to rob their business away, forgetting the fact that PR was born out of their greed and arrogance towards us.

Yes, we gave birth to PR – but unfortunately we expected too much in return and to make things worse, we expected PR to deliver instant results. We expected those 100 apples in PR’s bag to be 100 per cent perfect.

When we find two or three rotten apples, we are very quick to punish PR and ask for a refund immediately.

As typical Malaysians, we so conveniently forgotten that we used to allow BN to get away with their bad apples without complaint 20 years back.

Some of us even go to the extent of threatening PR that we will buy our apples from BN again if they don’t buck up. Some of us already written them off and some have even come to the conclusion that PR is just the same as BN.

PR kept quiet in the face of our criticism and threats because PR respects our views and values our importance.

But, to be fair to them, we must also recognise that it takes time to adapt from being a small stall apple seller to a apple wholesaler because it is a different business altogether.

We forget that PR is still new in this wholesaler business. Their directors all have different opinions of running this wholesale company because their knowledge were limited to operating their three different apple stalls – which they were targeting different groups of consumers to keep their business alive.

But now, it is a totally new scenario for these directors as they have to juggle between keeping their old customers coming back while satisfying the request of new customers who have turned their back on BN.

They are still searching for a balanced business approach so that they will not offend any of their customers, new and old alike.

Yes, as we expected, there will be some quarrels in PR every now and then. We saw some directors resigning along the way because they couldn’t agree to what PR was doing or they did not manage to secure any positions.

Some of them jumped over to BN because of better offers from BN. Some voiced their problems and dissatisfaction in the media because they couldn’t get their voices heard in the board room.

But this is not a good reason why we should lose confidence in PR. We have to keep in mind, all new companies face the same problems like PR and it takes time for them to stabilise, and it takes time for those directors to familiarise with this wholesale business.

Besides that, they have to deal with the constant sabotages from BN – which actually gives them less time to concentrate on improving this wholesale business.

We can’t expect them to be as masterful as BN in such short period of time in running this wholesale business when they are having a hard time running their business in a BN-friendly environment.

Problems will keep cropping out every now and then, but the important thing is those PR’s directors know how to solve those problems efficiently.

Yes, I agree that sometimes PR’s directors argue too much, and it makes them look rather instable. But are we too quick to punish them because of that? Why the impatience from our side? Why can’t we be more supportive of them?

I think the only reason why we feel so agitated when PR fails to be what we want them to be is that we want to kick BN out of business so badly and we cannot stand our hopes being dashed because of PR’s incompetence. PR is our last hope to ensure we get a fair price for our apples.

Just because we gave birth to PR, it doesn’t mean that they can’t do wrong. We should treat PR like our children, they must given the chance to rise again after they hit a snag. We must educate them to be the wonder child we hope for. But we mustn’t discourage them when they make mistakes.

Instead, we must ensure that they are able to rise up stronger again and again after each setback they endured. We can criticise, but we must also guide them to the right path. We can’t be too quick to write them off since we know that going back to BN is not going to help us to improve the situation anyhow.

BN is still the bigger player in this apple industry. PR is still very much the underdog, and in the business world, everyone is biased towards the underdog.

PR is going to have a hard time finding suitable low-cost transportation, suitable suppliers and loyal workers without being sabotaged by BN. They have to keep their business afloat despite the rising costs of goods imposed by BN’s cronies to destabilise PR.

The only way they can survive is by increasing their apples sales, which means they requires more support from us. Once they become the big brother in the apple business, they can start dictating to those suppliers and the transportation providers aligned to BN to lower their price or else they will lose the business contracts from PR.

To counter these fraud and high prices in the apple industry, we need PR to rise up in this BN-friendly environment to compete with BN, head-to-head.

We must ensure there are at least two apple wholesalers at all times in the future.

If we punish PR too hard, BN will take advantage of the situation to break PR into three small stall apple sellers so that they can monopolise the market again. And we must not let that happen because, in the end, we are the ones who will suffer.

Now let us get back to our real BN and PR in politics. Malaysians tend to very forgetful but they also can be very unforgiving. Malaysians can be very forgiving towards your mistakes for the past 50 years, but they can not forgive you for today’s mistake.

One wrong statement can change their whole perception about PR, regardless of how many good things PR had said or done in the past.

Sad to say, many Malaysian are still very emotional and very ignorant about the country’s well-being. As long as they get their typical three meals a day, they couldn’t care less about what the BN politicians are doing to our country. They forgot about the possibility that their children and grandchildren may not be that lucky as them!

PR’s death benefits only BN and its cronies and no one else. We are the biggest losers if PR goes down. Therefore, we must help to ensure PR survives at all cost. We must continue to lend our support to PR, even more so when they hit a rocky path, like they are going through now.

We must not lose sight of why we gave birth to PR. We wanted an alternative for us to choose from.

PR’s survival and success is about us and our country more than it is about PR or BN’s political prosperity.

We must ensure that PR survives and becomes the big brother in Malaysia’s politics to kick-start healthy competition between BN and PR. There can be no real two-party system until the other side wins at least once.

For a better Malaysia, we need PR. Punishing them now will lead us to back to BN’s dictatorship, and that’s exactly what BN wants us to do. – harakahdaily