Monday, 16-Feb-2004 7:58 AM

HARAKAH DAILY

The trouble with defecting…

Raja Petra Kamarudin

The trouble with defecting, you are not only despised by your ex-comrades and supporters, but the receiving side also looks down on you. No one likes a defector. Though your new comrades will receive you with open arms, they however do not have much regard for you for they know you are nothing but a turncoat. But they receive you with open arms anyway, not because you are an asset to them, but because your defection can hurt the other side. They actually do not need you, but they would rather the other side not have you.

It is like you and your neighbour are feuding. You have many fruit trees. So does your neighbour. In fact, he has more fruit trees than you do, and better ones at that too. But he will happily chop down your tree, not so that he can eat your fruits -- for once the tree is chopped down it dies and can no longer bear any fruit -- but so that he can deny you the pleasure of eating your own fruits.

That, in a nutshell, is the trouble with defecting.

Anyway, I know most of those National Justice Party grassroots leaders who defected to UMNO last week. One of them, Ruslan Kassim, was once the party Information Chief. For a couple of months I parked the Free Anwar Campaign (FAC) operation in his office in Jelatek so I interacted with him often enough.

Part of my work in the FAC was to publish books and produce VCDs on Anwar Ibrahim, Reformasi, and so on. Ruslan, then, was actively touring the country to attend ceramahs and he took these books and VCDs with him to sell at these ceramahs. During the Lunas by-election on 29 November 2000, Ruslan set up a stall to sell all sorts of nick-knacks, the FAC books and VCDs amongst them. He did brisk business and sold everything the first couple of days.

He phoned me for more stocks and I drove up to deliver a carload of stuff to him. Everything was sold out. When he went to the UK for his road show, he took so much stuff with him he had to pay excess baggage.  Understandably, I was thrilled that my “marketing agent” was doing such brisk business. The only problem though is that I was never paid and had to write-off RM60,000 seeing that there would be no way he was going to pay me.

Ruslan then asked me to join him in a meeting he had arranged with a “financier”. My job was to explain what the FAC was doing. I did just that and Ruslan closed my presentation emphasising that this grand plan therefore requires financing. I was brought to a couple more such meetings but there never seemed to be any follow-ups to these meetings. I took it that the financiers he had lined up did not come through. Later, I found out that money had in fact changed hands, purportedly to finance FAC’s activities.

I was quite perturbed that money was being raised in the name of the FAC and I had been used to conduct these presentations to legitimise the arrangement. That was when I realised why he had so willingly invited the FAC to operate from his office. He wanted to give the impression that the FAC was his operation, which would then enable him to canvas for donors.

I moved out of his office soon after that and till this day I do not know how much money he raised in the name of the FAC. And this is the quality of the keADILan leaders that UMNO has pinched from us. Frankly speaking, he should have been thrown out of the party long ago and why in heaven’s name Dr Wan Azizah did not do so is beyond me.

Dr Wan Azizah did, however, remove him as Information Chief but then he was given the Negeri Sembilan Chief’s post. Under his charge, keADILan Negeri Sembilan practically collapsed and many of its branches are now defunct. I will be surprised if you will be able to see a single keADILan flag flying in Negeri Sembilan.

If you ask me, UMNO did not steal one of our prized assets. UMNO did us a favour by helping the party rid itself of Ruslan Kassim. KeADILan needs Ruslan Kassim like it needs a hole in the head. Maybe now we can be spared the agony of him going all over town collecting money in the name of the perjuangan (struggle). I wonder how people he had suckered must feel. They must be kicking themselves hard at being conned by this sleek con artist. I, for one, am still kicking myself silly for letting go RM60,000 worth of goods, hard-earned money that is now down the drain.