MCLM and PR: A tale of two cities?

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Dec 20, 2010

To say that MCLM doesn’t mean much would be to underestimate it as an organization. MCLM has a legion of bloggers, social activists and commentators supporting it, because what it’s doing really does make sense: identify the best candidates and put them up for election.

By Aizuddin Danian

There is a lot of buzz in the blogosphere (strangely quite little in the “real world”) about the role the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) will have to play in the coming elections. Some people say that if MCLM put up candidates to contest, it will create three-way fights that will benefit BN (on the assumption that votes for the MCLM candidate will be drawn from those who would otherwise vote for PR). Some people say that MCLM is a great boon for the Malaysian public as the candidates it will offer to PR to run for seats in the election are the very best people of our society. Quality, so to speak.

There are a few issues here that probably need closer inspection.

Malek Imtiaz is the first MCLM candidate. A really smart guy, an excellent lawyer, and an all-around Mr Nice Guy Activist. The question is, if he is so good, why hasn’t he been tapped up for leadership before this? Why hasn’t BN recruited him, why hasn’t anyone in PR? Perhaps because, no matter how smart and good he is, he isn’t “electable”? Fighting a case to help a Muslim convert into Christianity. The sort of thing that i’m sure would make the Malay Muslims of both sides of the political divide twist their panties in discomfort. Imagine him meeting Nik Aziz and shaking his hand, “Good job there, mate. Love you work. Just hands off any PAS Muslim, alright?”
Let’s not delude ourselves — PR is just BN-lite. Maybe even a bit less cohesive on the religious-cultural front, if the noises coming from Mr Karpal Singh are anything to go by; the issue of the Islamic state has to be settled sooner or later. Being BN-lite, it uses the same internal political structure in determining who gets what where and how when the General Election comes about. Generally, the people who get tapped to run for federal seats have done their time for the party, and hold party positions of leadership in their constituencies. Here we come with MCLM and their list of “30 candidates”, “Here you go Anwar, 30 great guys and gals. Much better than 30 of your people, who we’ll just bypass in favour of these 30, ok?” There is no way that will be taken well by the internal machinations of PR.

If PR refuse to accept these 30, MCLM will put some, if not all of them up for election, thus creating the 3-way fights PR is afraid of. To say that MCLM doesn’t mean much would be to underestimate it as an organization. MCLM has a legion of bloggers, social activists and commentators supporting it, because what it’s doing really does make sense: identify the best candidates and put them up for election.