Aku Setuju: Kenapa Masih Menendang Bola Yang Dah Kempis?

Selalunya tendang bola kempis ni kaki sakit bola tak pun melantun jauh!

Stop kicking a deflated ball, Azmin

Roslan Bistamam

 | October 3, 2014

The MB should stop attacking Khalid and get on with the job of governing Selangor.

Azmin Ali will mark his first 100 days as Selangor Menteri Besar this New Year’s Eve. So we can expect news agencies and portals to run reviews of his performance in the job.

And what are they going to say?

Azmin has wasted 10% of that time attacking ex-MB Khalid Ibrahim. What can he gain from his continuous assault on someone who is no longer in office? It only leaves the impression that he is not a magnanimous person.

Even when the Japanese surrendered at the end of WWII, the British accorded them proper respect, never mind how vicious they were when they occupied South East Asia. The British saluted the surrendering Japanese instead of treating them the way they treated the people they conquered.

The British could have just lined them all up against a wall and machine gunned these war criminals—the way Islamic State is doing in Syria and Iraq—and no one would have blamed them one bit. But the British did not do this because it is just not cricket, as the English would say.

After Musa Hitam resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, he too was subjected to continuous attacks. He told his adversaries not to kick a deflated ball (bola yang kempis). “The ball will not go far and you will only hurt your foot.”

For all intents and purposes, Khalid is a bola yang kempis. So why continue to kick him, Azmin? You have only 90 days to reach your 100-day mark. That is too short a time to do the many things you need to do.

If I were Azmin, I would have thrown Khalid an official farewell party and invited all the senior Selangor civil servants as well. I would first of all have gone to meet Khalid to make known my intention and seek his blessing and get confirmation that he would attend.

Would it not have been great and historic if Azmin shook Khalid’s hand in front of 500 guests and the next day get down to running the state instead of wasting so much time planning the attacks on Khalid?

The anger against Khalid did not come about because he mismanaged the state or made a deal on his Bank Islam loan or entered into a water agreement unfavourable to Selangor. It was provoked by his refusal to resign when asked to.

But one thing that Azmin and Khalid’s other adversaries fail to comprehend is that Khalid was not appointed the MB by his party but by the Sultan. Hence he needed an audience with the Sultan to obtain his consent to resign.

Khalid could not just throw in his resignation letter. He needed to request the Sultan’s consent to his resignation. That is the proper Malay thing to do when dealing with the palace.

PAS knows this. DAP, of course, does not know this. PKR knows this but does not care.

Khalid did request that he be allowed to resign. It was the Sultan who told him to KIV his resignation until the issue of the successor could be settled.

But now Khalid is gone and Azmin is the MB. Is he running the state the way the Sultan would like it to be run?

Come Jan 1, we’ll be reading comments and analyses regarding Azmin’s first 100 days in office. When people compare what he has achieved against what his predecessor has done, does he want them to just sigh and say “Same old, same old”?