Klang Pakatan leaders: Badrul will not be missed

Keadilan big guns in Klang seem to sigh with relief at Badrul Hisham’s departure and are actually wishing Umno good luck with their current recruit.

Irwan Ismail, Head of Keadilan Youth, Klang division:

Badrul is obviously influenced by “Ezam’s people” who were also present at the press conference. In fact, his prolonged absence has indeed fueled speculations of his defection.

The fact is, Badrul has not fulfilled his responsibility towards his constituency since March 2008, despite using up all his allocation.

As youth members, we are his machinery and we had continuously offer our services to him. But the last time we managed to contact him was during the fasting month through his personal assistant.

Badrul’s service centre could not operate and had to close down because he was never there. So people have been bringing their complaints to other state assemblypersons. But even the state assemblypersons have complained that their funding could not sustain this.

So we had to open an extra service centre in Port Klang, under the supervision of Nik Nazmi, a few weeks ago. But it’s a bare bones operation. We can’t even afford to put up proper signage. But still, people are coming.

We feel that now that Badrul has left, things will be more organized and streamlined. The state government will be able to provide more assistance to the new service centre.

I believe that Umno will have a great challenge on their hands if Badrul joins their ranks, as it is a difficult task to teach him that his responsibility is to the rakyat.

The people of Port Klang should not fear because, in fact, many programs have been taking place despite Badrul’s absence. So we wish Badrul ‘good luck’ and we hope that he can maintain his ‘record of excellent service’ in the direction that he has chosen.

Charles Santiago, Member of Parliament, Klang:

Speaking as an MP for Klang, I must say that his performance has been dismal. He has been very uncooperative, and when I asked him why, it was like talking to a wall.

He cannot say that he didn’t perform because he did not have the funding because he was initially allocated RM500,000, and had four or five special officers to assist him, but even they ended up openly complaining about him in the press.

Port Klang is a constituency of poor people, so they really need assistance. His absence meant that people have been coming to me instead. I had to even visit suraus and mosques in Port Klang during Ramadan, to ensure Pakatan’s presence was felt.

I think the lesson here is that proper vetting should be done before a candidate is fielded. The party should also have developed a way to organise his activities.

I don’t think there is any rationale behind the timing of this defection. This has been going on for a long time. Even from day one you can see that he was always hanging around the Umno boys, although it has been more intense in the past few months.

I don’t think he will be an effective state assemblyperson even if he is with Umno because he appears to be more busy securing contracts for his cronies.

I think this is a warning for Pakatan Rakyat showing that people didn’t vote for Pakatan in the last elections, but voted to kick BN out. People voted against Zakaria, (Deros) and not for Badrul, so he should definitely resign.

Aidila Razak/Mkini