Rahman Dahlan - Kabinet Bayangan Dap tak relevan, syok sendiri @MPKotaBelud

Rahman - "Isu dan pertembungan dalam PR bukan hanya berkenaan Hudud tetapi jauh lebih mendalam. DNA Pas dan Dap langsung tidak sepadan dan bertentangan"

1. I refer to YAB Lim Guan Eng's announcement of DAP's shadow cabinet. The announcement is irrelevant and falls short of expectations. The rakyat wants to know who will be the future Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and cabinet ministers should Pakatan Rakyat win the next general election. The rakyat doesn't want to know DAP's shadow cabinet; the rakyat wants to know PR’s shadow cabinet. Does DAP’s announcement mean that PKR and PAS have no say or potential candidates to be included in the shadow cabinet line-up?

2. This is important as a shadow cabinet is a glimpse of what the rakyat might get from a Pakatan Rakyat federal government.

3. Even if DAP cannot work with PAS, surely Lim Guan Eng can at least include MPs from PKR in the shadow cabinet announcement! Or does Lim Guan Eng have problems with PKR too?

4. The question is a straight forward one. Has the problem plaguing the Pakatan Rakyat component parties become so acute that a shadow cabinet must be exclusively made up of DAP members?

5. What kind of signal does the DAP want to send to the public? Are PKR and PAS MPs incapable of formulating policies? Or does this exclusively one race dominated cabinet portfolio is the DAP's way to tell the public that DAP leadership has no qualms about side-lining everybody else? Either way, the message isn’t a palatable one.

6. Remember, the dispute between DAP and PAS is largely on hudud. Issues regarding finance, housing, foreign relations, economic policies etc are basically non-hudud items. Why then is it DAP cannot sit down with PAS on these non-hudud portfolios?

7. The answer to that is simple. It's not just about hudud. It is goes deeper than that. DAP and PAS own political DNAs are completely incompatible. The much celebrated cooperation between them is shallow and superficial. And the announcement of DAP's exclusive shadow cabinet is a stark testimony to this fact. At last, now the rakyat knows the united facade by Pakatan Rakyat is an attempt to hoodwink all of us Malaysians. All along it was just a dance of shadow.

8. Another point that Lim Guan Eng should understand is that shadow cabinet is not just about picking specific spokesmen for specific portfolios in parliament. That is too simplistic an attempt to define a shadow cabinet. I call that shadow-boxing instead of shadow cabinet because it allows you to hit your opponent but your opponent can't hit you back!

9. Let me explain. A shadow cabinet is not just about criticising the government's policies. A shadow cabinet must also come up with alternative to the government's policies that they object to. What the opposition MPs have been doing in parliament all these years has been the opposite. Much of their time is spent objecting to government policies but without coming up with solutions or alternative policies. If they only know how to criticize but refuse to offer alternatives, how will the rakyat know if they have better solutions? I am sure the BN backbenchers are very much eager to scrutinize Pakatan's policies as well. With both sides offering their policies and both sides actively acting as a check on each other's policies, the real winner will be the rakyat. The rakyat will eventually have better policies to choose from.

10. I hope Pakatan Rakyat will not use lack of funding or resources as an excuse not having proper shadow cabinet. All the furious debates they been having in parliament would not happen if they didn't have the funding or the resources to do research for the debate materials and the production of their alternative budgets every year.

11. Hence, Pakatan Rakyat MPs must stop the shadow-boxing once and for all and get on with the announcement of the real Pakatan's shadow cabinet.