Gerakan — no home in its heart, no cause of its own
By Baradan Kuppusamy, The Malaysian Insider
Gerakan is in deep despair as the party bravely soldiers on to find new purpose in life after its massive defeat in Election 2008 when it lost Penang, the crown jewel of the Barisan Nasional (BN) member.
But up to now, it has failed to reinvent itself, find a niche, or elect new and dynamic leaders to survive in a new age.
The issue is simple – after such a massive defeat, can Gerakan survive and find new purpose?
The consensus among influential political chat groups on the Internet and mainstream political commentators is to write-off Gerakan.
Some have already lowered Gerakan into the coffin, casting the party into political oblivion.
But Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, in a stirring speech at the Gerakan AGM yesterday, tried hard to raise the party’s spirits.
He asked delegates whether they had the gumption to rise from defeat.
But stirring speech or not, there is little for Gerakan to look forward to with the Princeton-educated Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon heading the leadership and past luminaries like Dr Lim Kheng Yaik pushing from behind.
In a previous era, Gerakan was admired as the conscience of BN.
But that gentlemanly-period is over and has been replaced with hardball politics unfamiliar to Gerakan and its leaders.
Gerakan had started as an “intellectual” party offering an egalitarian, multi-cultural platform to Malaysians but was gradually co-opted into BN by the then-prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak.
In BN, Gerakan played a modest role as a critic and conscience of the coalition.
But as Umno’s excesses grew and the party openly flaunted its Ketuanan Melayu ideology, Gerakan chose to remain silent and gave up on its role as champions of equality and egalitarianism.
