That three-initialled royal

JAN 7 — The first piece of news that has basically turned the political punditry in this country upside down in the year 2012 involves that three-initialled royal. I am of course referring to Raja Petra Kamarudin.

First of all, allow me to state the obvious. I wrote something a few years back criticising the infamous “Uncle Pete” for cutting and running to the United Kingdom, literally calling him yellow in comparison to Irene Fernandez. And, of course, RPK being RPK picked up on that piece and highlighted it on Malaysia Today.

What I found truly amusing was that The Star bore the brunt of his criticism, with every single blogger who read his piece stating that the newspaper had dropped in its standard of journalism before even bothering to check that it was in the “Opinion” section. Just goes to show that bloggers are just as ignorant and emotional as politicians when it comes to hubris, I guess.

Now, it is three years later. He once said that through the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM), he would not hesitate to criticise Pakatan Rakyat if they did anything wrong. As such, was it really a surprise when he suddenly came out with guns blazing against Anwar Ibrahim?

To brand someone as morally corrupt may have been a tad bit strong, especially if that person is Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Personally I would never call Anwar morally corrupt. I would say he is morally bankrupt. True, he is a brilliant orator. But with two sodomy trials, as well as that video which allegedly shows him sleeping with a Thai woman, morality is not Anwar Ibrahim’s strong suit, regardless of his links to the World Bank.

Wolfowitz can’t help him with this one.

Let’s look at things in a civilised manner, shall we?

Anwar, for all the good he has done for PKR, has nothing more to offer. In fact, come January 9 he will probably bring down the entire PKR with him. I come to this conclusion with a simple question in mind. Who is his successor in PKR? Azmin Ali? Nurul Izzah? N. Surendran perhaps?

No. We have not seen anyone in PKR who can take the helm, and as much as I’d like to see Elizabeth Wong kick ass and make the entire party scrap the idea of political posters to save the environment, it is not going to happen. In fact, you can compare Anwar with Tun Mahathir in this aspect.

How many deputies did each of them lose again?

And while you are thinking about that one, give me another few column inches to explain why PKR is in fact the weakest link in Pakatan Rakyat.

It is because they are too inclusive. You have the DAP which speaks of social democracy, Umno which talks of defending the rights of the Malays and PAS which speaks of the need for Islam to take the helm. Now as much as I cringe at the last one, the truth is that these parties are all exclusive. It is that exclusivity that makes them good parties in such a short period of time. If you can’t understand that, you just have to look at the disturbing but amazing rise of another politically motivated entity — Perkasa.

Now another issue that came up while RPK was doing his semi-usual rant on Anwar was the fact that he stated that Anwar might (and I would like to emphasise the word “might”) be gay and that would not be acceptable to the Malaysia public. He is right. Look at what happened during Seksualiti Merdeka.

The Malaysian public has yet to declare that being gay is acceptable, never mind about a gay prime minister. Anyone who believes otherwise should take a look at the Merdeka Center polls asking Malaysians whether or not they believe in religious authority and punishment during Kartika’s case.

They would support the caning of women who drink. Do you really think they would accept the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community?

Raja Petra, for all his faults as a huge windbag who gains information by talking to little birds and his view that being gay is immoral, also supports same-sex unions and wrote of the crackdown of Seksualiti Merdeka by comparing it to the Nazis who did the same during Hitler’s reign in Germany. You can view his writings on the matter at his No Holds Barred column on Malaysia Today.

As such, I personally won’t judge Uncle Pete so harshly. I would rather look at PKR and wonder why they would pull off such an attack on one three-initialled royal who is in self exile hundreds of miles away. And in the meantime, the LGBT community will take our own initiative to prove RPK wrong in the future.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.