PKR leaders miss main message from GE13 results

by Tarani Palani

and

Meena Lakshana

FZ.COM/Sam Fong

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  PKR defacto leader Anwar Ibrahim seems detached from the feelings of the party grassroots.

PETALING JAYA (May 28): Merely three weeks after the 13th general election, Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) held its 9th national congress which was postponed from last year.

 

Instead of using this opportunity for a little soul-searching to address its weaknesses in order to make further strides in the coming five years, the rhetoric and the message of its leaders – including president Datuk Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, de-facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and secretary-general Datuk Saifuddin Nasution – clearly deferred from the message the grassroots delegates were trying to convey to their leaders.

 

The grassroots leaders boldly admitted that the party's machinery was weak in rural areas and even gave suggestions to improve it but the national leaders preferred to focus on the "blatant acts of fraud" in GE13.

 

The delegates, all fresh from the bruising election, stressed one message which became clearer within the two days: that the PKR central leadership needed to assist and support the branches and divisions if it expected PKR candidates to win in elections, especially in the rural areas.

 

Speakers at the two-day congress last week also emphasised on the need to field more women candidates.

 

One delegate from the women's wing spoke on the importance of building a proper network in Felda settlements in order to break Umno's hegemony there as the party is surprisingly not even known in some of the settlements.

 

"They will ask you, what is PKR," she said.

 

Feisty Pahang representative Murnie Hidayah from the Srikandi wing, who contested and lost the Paya Besar parliamentary seat, also spoke about lack of support from the party central leadership.

 

"There are 10 Felda settlements in Paya Besar and we lost every single one of them. We have a central bureau for Felda and another for women's support so why can't the central party play a bigger role in ensuring the victory of the women candidates?" she asked during discussions by the women's wing.

 

Many delegates stated that the women were left high and dry with hardly any support to go all out during the election.

 

Marketing the party

 

PKR's Youth wing emphasised the importance of creating a solid machinery to penetrate the rural areas, stressing that youths, especially women, in rural areas were not aware of Pakatan Rakyat's messages.

 

PKR Youth chief Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin was unabashed in his speech, saying Pakatan also needed to address the competition within the coalition, as exhibited by the seven seats both PKR and PAS had vied for in the election.

 

He also stressed a grassroots-based marketing of the party, relying on youth members to convey the much-needed messages and policies of Pakatan to the rural electorate.

 

Selangor representative Najwan Halimi said that PKR needed to fend for its own and build the strength of its own machinery rather than relying on the machinery of other parties, namely PAS.

 

Another delegate who really struck a chord was Sarawak representative Joshua Jabeng, who plainly said the only way for PKR to penetrate rural areas in Sarawak is to be creative in its approach in order to break the money-politics promoted by Barisan Nasional, which has kept village heads subservient to the ruling coalition.

 

All this hard-hitting messages and keen analysis of PKR's performance in the May 5 polls was lost on its top leaders.

 

In a sense, PKR deputy president Mohamed Azmin Ali had a better grasp of the party's performance in the polls and the way forward, proposing the establishment of an Institute of Political Education to train members.

 

Anwar chose to spend half of his speech rambling on the "unfairness of it all" of the general election, even saying Pakatan could have clinched more seats were it not for electoral fraud.

 

Wan Azizah, too, merely repeated the party's stand which has already been circulating in the press for three weeks – Pakatan is the majority government, Malaysia badly needs a revamp of the electoral system, discrepancies in the electoral size of constituencies must be reduced, the heads of the Election Commission must step down.

 

Saifuddin's opening remarks also clearly stated where the party's central leadership psyche is at currently – still stuck at challenging and questioning the election results.

 

We get it. We, the people, are lugubrious with the tainted electoral system as well.

 

But PKR is doing a great disservice to itself by sidestepping the fact that the party, and by extension Pakatan, had only gained traction in urban and semi-urban areas, that rural areas are in need of alternative views on the policies that affect them and that Pakatan could really help them by providing them with the tools to do so.

 

No doubt fighting alleged fraud is crucial and is a major battle to dismantle an incompetent electoral system but PKR central leaders clearly missed the chance to engage with concerned delegates of making it an undoubtedly influential party in the future.