The members who walked out of the meeting were K Tamilselvan, deputy chair and head of the Selangor committee; P Ramesh, assistant secretary and chair of the Perak committee; K Chandra Mohan, treasurer; K Kalayselvam, head of the Penang state committee and central committee member; ‘Kapten’ Bala and Devendran, central committee members; and the national adviser N Ganesan.

W Sambulingam, the previous deputy chair; and Dr S Paraman, director of election strategies, had already left for the same reasons about a year to a year and a half ago.

This was the culmination of a problem that has been two years in the making, ever since Waytha Moorthy resigned as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office. His appointment as a deputy minister and his subsequent resignation had all to do with the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that was signed by PHM and BN on April 18, 2013 and the fact that the prime minister and BN had breached the contract in the MOU.

Najib’s and BN’s utter failure to deliver on the terms in the agreement was obvious, yet Waytha Moorthy blocked moves suggested in the central committee to pursue a legal strategy to call the BN and the PM to account for this breach. Waytha Moorthy proffered a variety of reasons which the central committee members considered questionable for his non-support for such a strategy, all of which were considered attempts to scuttle the initiative to get the matter to court.

He has not fully explained himself on this count, leaving it to strong speculation that he harbours other personal motives, disregarding the fundamental approach of the Hindraf movement of uncompromisingly serving the Indian poor.

The split first burst out visibly into the open on the occasion of the Bersih 4 rally in August 2016. The stated objectives of Bersih 4 could not have been closer to the real objectives of the Hindraf movement, yet flimsy reasons were used to block PHM members’ participation in the rally. Several key members defiantly disregarded this unacceptable position and went ahead and joined the rally.

Choreographed elections?

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was on March 6, 2016. A move to engineer the ouster of critics through choreographed elections at the impending annual general meeting (AGM) was exposed. That saw the walkout of the seven senior members and the split came to the fore.

PHM failed once, based on the unfulfilled promises made during the 13th general election (GE) campaign that implementation of the MOU would result in a new dawn for the Indian poor. History is teaching lessons and ignoring these lessons is not the stuff of forward-looking leadership.

Hindraf’s basic position of “it does not matter who controls government, the Indian poor have to find ways to determine their destiny on their own, allying with other like minded Malaysian organisations and movements” is based on what history is teaching.

Pursuing a political strategy now to go back to Najib and BN willy-nilly, and so soon after a major deception by them, as these moves clearly suggest, is to say the least a blatant betrayal of the trust placed by the Indian poor on PHM, all over again.

The prime architect of the failed MOU strategy with BN must own up and take full responsibility for the failure and not attempt to engineer another round of partnership with BN, ignoring all counsel. This will result in misleading a vulnerable community once more for who knows how long, for nothing more than petty personal interests.

N GANESAN is national adviser, Hindraf.