Can Pakatan Rakyat continue to inspire?

Ooi Kee Beng

The results of the double by-elections in Batu Sapi and Galas last week were not surprising. What is surprising is how strong the Barisan Nasional (BN) came out looking.

The parliamentary seat in Batu Sapi was won handsomely by Ms Linda Tsen Thau Lin, the widow of the Member of Parliament whose sudden death triggered the by-election. She managed to attract the same impressive support as her husband had done for the BN in the general election in 2008.

No doubt, incumbency is a powerful factor.

In Kelantan, the state seat of Galas won by the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) just two years ago by a small margin was lost to the BN by a relatively large margin. This constituency had traditionally been a BN stronghold but one cannot in this case discount the importance of the current voting pattern.

What plagues the two-year-old opposition coalition, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR)? Without the ability to counteract the electoral machinery of the BN, the PR’s steep path to Putrajaya rises into a cliff.

One thing that has always worried fence-sitters is that the PR, being a collection of diverse parties, may not be up to the job despite its attractive principles of social justice and good governance. Better the devil who knows himself than the angel who doesn’t.

For the PR to replace the BN is one thing, but what has been a major problem in Malaysian politics over the last few decades has been the rampant centralisation of governance and the economy by a system not known for transparency, fairness or competence.

What the PR needs to sell to the voting population of Malaysia is, therefore, more than a mere need for a change of personnel in the federal government and in Parliament. Aside from better governance, it has to excite the masses with the idea of de-centralisation and capture their aspirations for local empowerment.

The big mistake that the PKR — and the PR — committed in Batu Sapi, therefore, was to highlight the BN-versus-PR struggle ahead of the Centre-versus-Periphery dichotomy by entering the fray as an outsider.

All it managed to accomplish was share between itself and the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) the same number of votes that had already gone against the BN in 2008. The SAPP’s agenda tellingly pushes for greater autonomy for Sabah.

Exchanging one centralist coalition for another may not be the common Malaysian’s idea of change.

What the PR parties need to do — and this is as valid for East Malaysia as well as the peninsula, for urban as well as rural constituencies — is to revisit their idea of centralised and wholesale change.

Although the three parties are quite independent of each other, they attempt to project a unity and a consensus that is simply not there. Their political understanding and electoral strategy seem to require them to project themselves as a centralised alternative to the centralised BN-controlled state. This hurts their credibility.

As we can see in the BN itself, its many parts are in trouble. Centralism is losing its appeal very quickly.

Young blood needed

Something else now gone missing in the electoral battles is the youthfulness that once characterised the PR parties. While leaders tend to be from an older generation, the work that needs doing on the ground must rely on the enthusiasm of the young. The heavy artillery does not work if the light infantry is weak.

By definition, serious change requires youthful exuberance. No injection of youth means no real change; that would be the far from unreasonable assumption of the common voter.

This is perhaps the PR parties’ greatest challenge at the moment. Having worked on consolidating themselves since 2008, they have a harder time projecting themselves not only as parties of change but also as parties that are self-critical and honest enough to rejuvenate themselves.

Having an attractive moral agenda is far from enough during times of change. One has to excite young blood. — Today