Helping the poor can get you into trouble

PSM’s Jeyakumar was a thorn in BN’s side even before he became an MP.

INTERVIEW

KUALA LUMPUR: Even before he got into mainstream politics, Dr Michael Jeyakumar was such an irritant to the government that it once tried to put him out of circulation by offering him a scholarship to pursue any course of his choice overseas.

That was in 1998, a year before DAP fielded him as an election candidate in Sungai Siput.

He told FMT the scholarship offer was just one of several attempts to get him out of Perak, where he had been relentlessly fighting for social justice for the poor since his undergraduate days in the late 1970s.

He was also offered the job of heading the medical department of a government hospital in Pahang. He turned down that offer too.

But he has paid a heavy price for his activism. The government once stopped paying his salary as a doctor and referred him to a disciplinary committee. That was when he decided to play an active role in politics, eventually joining Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).

The soft-spoken MP said he opened his eyes to the plight of the poor in 1977 when, while pursuing his medical degree at Universiti Malaya, he participated in a community service project in a rubber estate in Sungai Siput.

He soon joined an NGO called Alaigal, which worked with estate and urban pioneer communities, and has since continued with his social activism and community service.

“Actually I’m not the kind of person who is very keen on politics,” he said, “but involvement with squatters and estate workers motivated me to do good for people as an elected representative.”

In 1999, he offered himself to DAP as its candidate for the Buntong state seat, but the party preferred to place another candidate there and told him to contest in Sungai Siput instead. He lost to the then formidable S Samy Vellu.

He lost again in 2004, but became the giant killer in March 2008. In both elections, he contested under the PKR ticket. (PSM was registered only in August 2008.)

He has maintained his service centre in Sungai Siput since the 1999 election while continuing to run his private clinic in Ipoh.

The 57-year-old politician acknowledged that he could not allocate enough money for activities in his constituency, but he believes he still has support among voters because they want an honest and dedicated politician to represent them.

Anti-capitalism

He described PSM as “a lightweight party within Pakatan Rakyat” but said it had an important role to play in the alliance by virtue of its anti-capitalist stand.

“Other parties within Pakatan are in favour of capitalism, but PSM has always been firm in our stand that socio-economic problems in the country are mainly due to our market oriented economy.”

Dr Jeyakumar said the main issues in Sungai Siput were unemployment, landlessness and the displacement of estate workers, with youths being forced to seek work as far away as Singapore.

“SMIs operating within the industrial zone in Sungai Siput prefer to employ foreigners,” he said. “They claim that it is cheaper to employ Nepalis and Bangladeshis, besides their being much easier to control than locals.”

He said unemployment forced people to remain as squatters and resulted in various social problems.

Dr Jeyakumar reckons that there are about 700 squatter families in Sungai Siput, 300 of them living on government land and the rest on private land.

“We have managed to stop the forced eviction of these families, but our effort to secure land titles for them is not getting much support from the land office and local council,” he lamented.

He said so far only two squatter settlements had received a positive response to their application for alternative land. “But it will cost each family at least RM50,000 to relocate and build a new house.”

He said even the Orang Asli Department was not supporting land applications for members of the aboriginal community, who make up 7% of Sungai Siput voters.

Dr Jeyakumar’s service centre deals with about 30 cases a week. Most of these, he said without elaborating, were welfare cases.

Speaking about the 13th general election, he said PSM was likely to field candidates in Sungai Siput, the Perak state seat of Jelapang and the Selangor state seats of Semenyih and Kota Damansara, just like in 2008.

Punishing Samy

He attributed his 2008 victory to the determination of Indian voters to see the defeat of BN. He said Sungai Siput voters decided to punish Samy Vellu for what they saw as his arrogant response to Hindraf’s 2007 rally.

For the coming election, he believes that voters will also consider local issues.

“I can’t give much money to support their programmes, but I believe they value my service not only in Sungai Siput but also in Parliament,” he said.

According to his analysis, Indian support for BN prior to 2007 was between 70% and 80%, but in 2008 less than 40% voted for Samy Vellu.

He believes that the various government announcements about projects for the Indian community have helped BN to regain some support. Perhaps up to 50% of Indians would vote for BN this time around, he said.

He added that some Indians were not happy that Pakatan and their representatives had not done enough for the betterment of the community.

He said the Chinese and Malays in his constituency had not complained much about his performance, but he acknowledge that he needed more time to tackle several issues affecting them and other communities, particularly the questions of landlessness and a lack of employment opportunities.

Referring to the Orang Asli voters, he said only 1% supported him when he contested as a DAP candidate.

“It improved to 4% in 2004 and then 10% in 2008, when I contested under PKR.”