GEORGE TOWN: Datuk Paduka Ibrahim Ali, the politician who once had the ignominy of being the poster boy of party hopping, has now come out to voice his disgust over the practice.
The Kelantanese former lawmaker, who earned a PhD from a university in Cambodia, now likens party hoppers to a “club of frogs”.
Ibrahim’s political career has been one of a continuous shift in loyalty. His first party was the now-defunct Berjasa, but he was first elected MP of Pasir Mas on an Umno ticket. He then abandoned the party to join the breakaway group Semangat 46, which was led by Kelantan prince Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
He was an Umno candidate again in the 1999 general election but left the party to contest the 2004 polls as an independent. In 2008, he won the Pasir Mas seat on a PAS ticket but soon fell out with the Islamist party leaders.
He left to form a Malay rights group called Perkasa but lost his seat in the 2013 elections to PAS newcomer Nik Muhammad Abduh Nik Aziz.
Ibrahim then formed a new party called Parti Bumiputra Perkasa Malaysia (Putra) to contest in the 2018 elections.
Looking back over the past 30 years of his political journey, Ibrahim now sees his party hopping as a “mistake” that should not be emulated by aspiring politicians.
However, he is quick to stress that his own defections from one party to another had not had more than a ripple on the political scene.
“Now, people are jumping ship en masse, and that has brought down governments,” he pointed out, in reference to Sabah, where snap elections have had to be called after the incumbent government lost several of its assemblymen to the Opposition.
“This is clear disregard of the democratic principles and the trust voters have placed in them,” Ibrahim told theSun yesterday.
He has proposed that an amendment to the Elections Act be tabled and passed to prevent such defections “because it is a strain on the country’s financial resources, security and political stability”.
“Previously, it was just me crossing from one party to another on personal grounds. Now, a movement of frogs has begun and this has led to the fall of a government,” he said.
Ibrahim recalled that he had been maligned in the past “but now I’m having the last laugh as I watch more and more politicians doing the same thing”.
He said the culture of defections is also dangerous because it undermines democracy and the voice of the majority.
“Those who do it are only serving their own political interests instead of those who voted for them.”
He said MPs and assemblymen who defect should lose their seats and be replaced by a member from the party they once represented.
DAP and PKR have taken steps to prevent such practice by imposing fines of up to RM10 million on those who jump to another party.
However, Bar Council president Salim Bashir said that freedom of association, as enshrined in the Federal Constitution, would make it difficult to introduce legislation to make defections unlawful.
