Datuk Anifah stunned BN MPs in Dewan Rakyat

"What good is a leader if the people are no longer with him?"

This question was posed by Datuk Anifah Aman to the BN parliamentarians at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

This is what he had to say:

"What is the point of persisting with leaders who have deviated from the right path? Do we stick with them?"

Anifah then pondered about the price of blind loyalty to leaders and the price people would have to pay for this.

"What is the use of being loyal to leaders and, in the process, sacrificing our people's future?"

Anifah said: "Independence would be meaningless if the people could not enjoy clean running water or if children had to walk miles to get an education."

Minister Zahid Hamidi asked Anifah if Sabah backbenchers were tempted to cross over to the opposition. Anifah's reply stumped him and a whole lot of BN MPs as well as the oppositions.

"I am not saying I am crossing over. This matter of crossing over is not a serious matter. What is serious is the millions in 5-States in Malaysia who crossed over to the opposition," Anifah said.

This led Datuk Puad Zarkashi (BN-Batu Pahat) to ask Anifah if he would support an anti-hopping law.

Anifah replied that he was against any law that would stop members from exercising their individual rights. "That would be like a police state. What is the point of persisting with leaders who have deviated from the right path?'

Anifah said the most important thing that the government should work on now was to prevent Sabah from going the way of the 5-States ruled by Pakatan Rakyat.

"The important thing now is for Sabah people not to jump like the Peninsula Malaysians did in the 5-States."

Source: Anifah: No harm in crossing over

One important aspect that Datuk Anifah Aman exhorted is the main point of parliamentarians and the ruling regime including the opposition camp is the fact about the interest of the rakyat.

In the words of Anifah, the question of MPs crossing over to either camp is not the main issue but that the millions of voters who had crossed over to Pakatan Rakyat should be the main issue which the Barisan Nasional leaders should have pondered seriously and conduct post-mortem using an internal critical reflective attitude to deduce the fundamental reasons of their defeat and to analyze and reconstruct themselves to a position of strength and to win back the support of the people.

Instead they are spending most of their time in trying to run down the Pakatan Rakyat government and the balance of their time in trying to stopped any cross-overs of their MPs to the other camp.

This is also the same problem with the Pakatan Rakyat government who spends most of their time looking back to past records and trying to construct a devil out from the past regime; and also trying to see how to get the monies from the charitable organization previously managed by the Barisan Nasional wives' organization.

Why the monies from Balkis, Bunga Tanjung, Baiduri or Bindara were distributed to Bakti wasn't the real issue as Bakti is a renown charitable organization with proven track records. The issue can only be if the monies had gone to the pockets of the individual members or office bearers which tantamount to a criminal breach of trust. As it was, the monies from the wives' organization were given to Bakti and PR should not question the validity even if there is legal points of dispute as the action was and is noble and charitable in itself.

If the PR government representatives are sincere to do charity they should contribute monies from their own efforts and garner the public support by setting up more charitable organizations and ensure that monies donated by the people and any organizations towards the charitable institutions would be properly managed for the absolute interest of the poor and needy. There should not be any ideological and political differences between any charitable organizations as all of them are working for the common good of the people - it is about charity, not politics.