When you are campaigning, you need to make your message clear and simple for everyone to understand. Creating a 100-Day Manifesto is a one good way to do that. It sets out clearly and simply what you want to achieve for the rakyat if they vote you into power, and it sets a time limit for those things to be achieved.
Why 100 days and not 99 days or 101 days or 75 days or 125 days etc, etc? Why 100? Because it's a nice round figure that sounds catchy and easy for any voter to grasp.
If you are a political watcher of any sort, you will know that politicians will make promises that they cannot keep. In some cases, this means promises delayed. In other cases, it means promises unfulfilled. That's true of politicians overseas and it's true here too. It's to be expected. And so it is with the Pakatan 100-Day Manifesto.
What's important is to see which promises are not being implemented and what is the reason for its delay or non-implementation.
Let's take the case of GST. Pakatan had campaigned heavily on removing GST should it come to power. This message resonated strongly with voters, many of whom felt the pinch because of the 6% tax.
Getting rid of the GST is one promise Pakatan cannot fail to do. It is an absolute must-do. And that is why even though there were some early indications that it might take some time to actually dismantle it, Dr M ordered that GST be effectively removed immediately by bringing the GST rate down to 0%.
Technically bringing it down to 0% is not the same as dismantling it. But the practical effect of it on consumers is the same as it being abolished. So the people are happy. Pakatan knew it absolutely must get rid of GST and it found a way to effectively do so. Immediately.
Another thing that Pakatan needed to do immediately was to investigate scandals, in particular the 1MDB fiasco. In the manifesto it said it would set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) into such scandals. So far no RCI has been set up yet but does it really matter? Does anyone seriously think that investigations into 1MDB-related crimes are not being taken seriously or given enough attention. Yes, technically you are not exactly fulfilling the manifesto if you don't set up an RCI (as stated in the manifesto) but what the rakyat wanted is for the culprits behind these scandals be brought to justice. And that is ongoing. Nobody's going to complain about this one.
Something that is being delayed is the promise to standardize minimum wages across the country. That probably won't happen within 100 days. Is it good to have standardized minimum wages? Yes. Will Pakatan eventually implement it? There's no reason to doubt that. But it probably won't happen exactly within 100 days. Whether it takes 101 days or 110 days or 150 days or more, as long as there is a genuine commitment to see it through within a reasonable amount of time (not 1000 days!) I think the rakyat will forgive the delay.
And the same goes for the rest of the manifesto. The question is: Will there be a walk back of the promises. So far there's no indication that Pakatan plans to renege on any of the promises. But even if it were to do so on one or two items, it's important to look at whatever reasons they give for it and to assess whether it's a reasonable and acceptable argument. Perhaps there's some new developments that make it impossible to fulfill certain promises. Maybe there are better alternatives than what was promised. Or maybe it's a totally flimsy or ridiculous reason that they offer. We need to assess each situation and decide whether we feel Pakatan has been the right choice.
The alternative is of course to go back to BN or whatever remains of BN. Or simply to UMNO. Or PAS. Does anybody want that?
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