PKR – Some Questions on Culture and Organisational Structure.

By batsman 

I was intrigued by Hakim Joe’s challenge to Karpal Singh whether he (Karpal) had witnessed PKR elections first hand and been around for the vote count. At the same breadth Joe claims that PKR electioneering culture is inherited from UMNO, so I wondered if Joe had witnessed UMNO elections first hand and been around for the vote count to make this claim.

Still, it seems to me that there is a strong link between organisational structure and culture. Looking at history, we see that with a New Army of about 2,500 men, Cromwell was able to defeat the English king with an army of over 7,000 men at Naseby. 

By comparison, more than 1500 years earlier, in a different part of the world, great armies of over 100,000 men on each side (sometimes with 600,000 men on just one side) regularly and frequently clashed in the battlefields of China. 

Obviously it takes a lot more to raise an army of  100,000 men than an army of 2,500 men. Could this explain why Asians in general are so much more placid and obedient than Europeans and why Europeans are so much more aggressive and rebellious? It was built into the cultures respectively through organisational structure. 

For the Europeans, it was relatively easy to defy your king while to the Chinese, defying the Emperor means one has to have enough money to raise armies of hundreds of thousands of men or one lost one’s head. 

The question is – if the PKR is organizationally a carbon copy of UMNO, could not its romantic idealism in giving its members the direct vote the greatest folly and tragedy in Malaysian politics? 

Obviously power in UMNO is based on patronage and is feudal in nature. Its organisational structure therefore reflects this. The big chieftain cannot deal with tens of thousands of members directly through patronage. He needs to depend on sub-chiefs and the sub-chiefs must depend on mini-chiefs through a whole chain of feudal patronage. In a sense that is why UMNO needs so many vice-presidents. (Perhaps if Joe had witnessed UMNO elections first hand, he might be able to provide more detail and information for us to consider.) 

As a comparison, Red Indian chiefs can at most control 100 – 300 braves. To muster greater numbers for a big war, allied tribes speaking roughly the same language or dialect need to be persuaded to join the fight and a great war chief elected by the war council. This was a cumbersome affair and control and command was confusing and tedious. So it was that Red Indian culture remained tribal and eventually suffered genocide. 

The early Republican Romans had essentially the same structure (with big landlords instead of big tribal chiefs), only more efficient and more structured, with laws and formal institutions to control things. Later power was invested in an emperor, but as with the Chinese dynasties, control fluctuated between periods of peace and plenty punctuated by war and instability every 100 – 300 years or so, the difference was that powerful Roman generals could seize power sometimes without even killing the overthrown emperor, while in China, the emperor and his whole clan and family had to be wiped out and another family installed. 

So it is that a culture based on placidity and obedience must have murderous intent as its counterpart, while a culture based on rebellion and defiance could also be humane and loyal to its laws. 

So it is that when PKR gave members the direct vote, PKR chieftains panicked because they had not bothered to  reach out to ordinary members directly. They were big chieftains without Red Indians. They depended on the mass media to create a reputation based on their deeds at the national level and often it was just publicity seeking comical deeds. It was hoped that such deeds could attract the support that they needed to stay in power. 

The results of PKR elections may support this conclusion. The voter turnout was miserable, showing that the ordinary members had not been properly organized and motivated and that the big chieftains were divorced from the grassroots. Those that bothered to turn out were subjects of their patrons and since one patron cannot reach out to tens of thousands of subjects directly, only a handful turned out and since these were fanatically motivated to support their masters, fist fights depended on hair triggers such as suspected wrong procedures for elections. Ordinary members voting without undue critical interest should not be so emotionally charged. The middle men (sub and mini patrons) were missing from the equation. 

In addition, we now have a fair idea of what happens during UMNO elections at the branch and divisional level –  lots of open hanky panky happens, but since these are committed by the dominant patron, most voters close both eyes. The situation became tensed only when 2 dominant and mutually unfriendly patrons contested. Unfortunately PKR has taken into its ranks people unfamiliar with all this patronage and hanky-panky culture, so there was horror and unending questions on the smallest transgressions. 

It seems to me that this is the only (maybe a bit long winded) explanation for so many problems arising from so few voters in so short a time. If you can provide some sane alternative explanation, please do so to get us all out of our misery. 

So it would seem to me that to change organisational structure at the stroke of a pen based on romantic ideals is a famous folly and a great tragedy without considering changes to be made in culture as well. 

It would seem to me that PKR should not be accused of hanging on to obsolete feudal UMNO culture and traditions, but should instead be accused of being too wishy washy and too romantic in trying to move ahead too fast for its own good, even before organizing and preparing the grassroots for such a difficult and complex endeavour. (Such a mistake is not a rare one and can be found in all sorts of situations throughout history, one famous one would be the Cultural Revolution in China.) 

Add in possible black ops sabotage and expert opinion forming by expensive consultants hiring hack writers, the situation can reach hysterical proportions which apparently it looks like it did. 

It would seem to me that PKR big chiefs are trying to rule by decree rather than by painstaking organization at the grassroots level. Such a method of leadership assumes that the grassroots are able to react well and capably to such decrees. Obviously such an assumption is false. 

So if you guys want to throw around wild accusations and sling around filthy mud, please, at least sling the right kind of mud. heeheehee