Selecting Ramkarpal will send the wrong signal

The DAP will waste a rare opportunity to leverage on the good vibes accruing the party from the hugely-attended obsequies for Karpal Singh Deo and the enduring fragrance of his stature if they choose a third scion of the Deo family to contest the parliamentary seat vacated by their lamented chairperson's untimely departure.

It's being bruited about that Ramkarpal, lawyer son of the father, will be fielded by DAP in the by-election for the Bukit Gelugor seat.

He will win hands down.

But DAP will lose the larger battle against the nepotism, cronyism and corruption that have warped Umno-BN's rule all these years and under whose weight the country is groaning.

Ramkarpal joined the DAP only last November, rather late for a 38-year old.

If chosen as the DAP candidate, his selection is owed to hereditary privilege, not individual merit.

Ironically, holding forth on hereditary privilege - its constitutionally circumscribed spheres - was what put the late Karpal in the legal cross hairs.

This is not to say that Karpal was in violation of the Sedition Act when he held forth the way he did in February 2009 in the Perak constitutional crisis that erupted at that time.

But he was speaking on the issue of a constitutional monarchy. Need it be said that a monarchy, constitutional or absolute, is all about inherited privilege.

Isn't it ironic, then, that Karpal's death should be the occasion for the embedding of hereditary privilege in a party whose social democratic ethos is averse to such practices and whose fight is for an egalitarian polity?

If Karpal had not died and was disqualified from holding his Bukit Gelugor parliamentary seat by dint of his losing the apex court appeal against conviction under the Sedition Act, the fielding of another Deo family member in his stead would be the symbolically appropriate thing to do.

But not in the present instance.

Even with Karpal gone, there is no dearth of the Deo family in prominent positions in the DAP. One son, Jagdeep Deo, is a state executive councillor in Penang and another, Gobind, is an MP.

Why he must not have a sedan chair ride...

The reason why a third Deo should not have a sedan chair ride to MP-ship is that DAP must be for entitlement by merit, not inheritance.

All this would not matter if the hereditary reflex within the political class in Malaysia were not prominent.

The current prime minister is the son of a former holder of the post; the defence minister is also a former prime minister’s son; the Kedah menteri besar is the son of a former PM, the opposition leader's wife is the unchallenged president of his party; his daughter, at just 34, is rising within PKR by inherited aura, not merited substance; the chief minister of DAP-held Penang is the son of the party's adviser, and it was bruited about in the grapevine that the CM's sister was considered for nomination as the DAP candidate for Bukit Gelugor, which ought to make the choice of Ramkarpal less unjustifiable.

One could go on but need'nt make the point that the hereditary reflex in the political class is beginning to mirror the increasingly sclerotic nature of social class in Malaysia.          

PM Najib's siblings are wealthy; the children of a predecessor of his are fabulously so; the menteri besar of Selangor has had his Bank Islam dues much reduced from something like RM59 million; the son of the governor of Sarawak, according to revelations from his ongoing his divorce proceedings, reeks with the odour of  unearned riches.

All this is known against mounting evidence that a high percentage of Malaysians born today in the bottom quintile of earners will remain there as adults.

Ambitious parents will breed aspirant children but combatants for a more egalitarian Malaysia must be wary of engendering a polity where, when it comes to power, it draws from a small gene puddle.

The exercise of heritage is for aristocrats, not social democrats.


By TERENCE NETTO who has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.

Posted first in Malaysiakini