Thursday, 19-Feb-2004 6:49 PM

Keadilan knows nuts about psychological warfare

They say, sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind. Today, I am going to be cruel, just so that I can be kind to the National Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Nasional or keADILan). And the cruel thing I want to say is, “Keadilan knows nuts about psy-war!”

To be fair though, keADILan has some of the best psy-war brains. However, these “brains” are not being utilised for the benefit of the party. I will not mention who these people are but the party and these people concerned know who they are.

Just days after the one-time party Information Chief and 11 of keADILan’s Youth Wing leaders left the party to crossover to Umno, 73 Umno members from Padang Rengas joined keADILan. Did keADILan, however, make a big deal out of the whole thing?

“We do not want to follow Umno’s style,” said one Women’s Wing leader apologetically. “If we put on a show, then people will say we are just like Umno.”

Why be apologetic about it? This is Umno’s way of fighting. If you want to fight your adversary, and win, then you must use their same tactics. You can’t fight an enemy who is wielding a sword by using your bare fists and argue that this is the noble thing to do. If they use a sword, then you use a gun and bring him down before he can get even close to you. A fight is a fight and all’s fair in a war.

Do we know who these 73 Umno members are? Were their names and positions in Umno flashed on all the websites? In fact, no photographs were even taken of the “Selamat Tinggal Umno” (Goodbye Umno) event. And the Youth Leader, Ezam Mohd Nor, was there to induct these ex-Umno, now keADILan, members.

Why was this so? I would have taken tons of photos and spread them far and wide. I would have even inserted a caption that says “Umno – 12; keADILan 73”, a spoof of a football score.

For that matter, over the last one year alone, thousands of Chinese in Perak have joined keADILan. Why are we keeping so quiet about it?

“We do not want to upset the Democratic Action Party (DAP)”, is the reply I get.

Why should the DAP be upset? Have we pinched DAP members? I know we have an unwritten understanding that the opposition parties will not pinch each other’s members. Well, a few may have once been DAP members, is the explanation I am offered. But even if they were, and only a couple at that, they had ceased being DAP members for some time now.

Well, if this is so, then what is the big deal? Let’s splash this all over the internet. Get it into the print media too if we can. Let us light firecrackers and beat our drums. Make as much noise as we can and let the whole world know that keADILan is growing and not shrinking.

We must never be afraid of appearing boastful. Good things are happening in keADILan but the news does not get into the newspapers. The only thing that people get to read is the bad news. Granted there is some bad news, not only in keADILan but in all political parties as well, but there is more good news than bad. And, this, the people must get to read.

Anyway, back to those 12 who, last week, left the party to join Umno. Do you, who may be reading this piece, know who they are?

Of course many know Ruslan Kassim, the one-time Information Chief. I bet many also know Hanafiah Man and Zahid Md Arif, the two big names in the Youth Movement. But how about the other nine? Can you tell me who they are? What have they achieved during their tenure in the party? When, in the first place, did they join the party? Were they -- like Ruslan Kassim, Hanafiah Man and Zahid Md Arip -- once Umno members? If so, what positions did they hold in Umno? Were they people of any importance in their Umno days? Nobody knows. What is even more of a surprise, many in the Youth Movement did not even know who all these nine are. They could probably identify three or four, but nobody could precisely identify all nine. And, did you know, one of them was not even a keADILan member? He had resigned from the party two years ago.

Yet the party did not play up this fact. It could have easily posed these questions and people would have reflected on it and would have said, “Yes, you are right. Who in heaven’s name are all these people? Aside from the first three, if we do not know the other nine, then they could not be people of any importance. And, if so, what has the party lost?”

Take another case in point; yesterday’s sacking of Lokman Noor Adam. On Monday, an inquiry was held for the Youth Leader, Ezam Mohd Nor, to state his case against Lokman. Ezam did just that, complete with evidence and witnesses. The following day, Lokman was allowed to argue this case. He, however, refused to do so, stating that he has no confidence that the panel would be fair and unbiased. Yesterday, taking into consideration that Ezam had argued his case while Lokman chose to absent himself, the party made a decision to sack Lokman.

Today, the party issued a statement confirming it had sacked Lokman. The press statement, however, did not explain what happened. People would be of the opinion that Lokman was arbitrary sacked without the benefit of a fair hearing. The fact that Lokman chose to give Ezam a “walk over” was never explained. This is certainly bad PR on the part of the party. I would have exposed Ezam’s evidence against Lokman -- which I assume must be very damaging indeed for the party to take that drastic action of sacking him -- and would not have failed to mention that Lokman did not support his allegation’s against Ezam with any evidence or witnesses whatsoever though allowed to do so.

All this could have been better handled. Now the party would be seen as heavy handed just because it “did not want to make a big issue of it” -- just like it does not want to make a big issue out of those so many Umno people joining the party.

I know it is very unMalay and unAsian to boast. But sometimes we need to boast a bit just to show we are better and bigger than what people say. We allow the mainstream media to focus on and play up our negatives. And though we have many more positives -- which of course the mainstream media will not even mention -- we do not know how to blow our own trumpet.

It is time the party learnt how to “talk” to the public. The public is beginning to wonder whether the party is disintegrating. The opposite is in fact true. But then, who will know about it if the party will not scream and shout?