What use are a party’s internal elections?

SHAH ALAM - As PKR’s internal elections heat up, it may be time to ask some introspective questions about how political parties work in Malaysia.

One of the more unique features of Malaysian politics is that the majority of big parties in Malaysia are actually technically splinter parties from Umno.

PAS, PKR, Bersatu are the big ones, then there are older ones like Semangat 46, or splinters of splinters such as Amanah and Pejuang.

What is worth noting is that as these parties splintered from Umno, they took with them Umno’s structure, and to an extent, Umno’s culture.

This is understandable of course, as many of these parties were formed somewhat in a rush and flurry, in response to circumstances around them. PKR had to be hastily put together in the wake of what was happening in 1998. In recent years, Muda also seems to have been formed relatively quickly.

When a party is formed like this, its structures tend to be borrowed from existing structures. There probably wasn’t time to really think through how to shape a party’s structure in order to truly match its ideology and purpose. Instead, they turn to mimicry.

Let’s take a look at PKR.

PKR’s structures mirror that of Umno quite closely - they have a president, a deputy president, and several vice presidents; they have a youth chief and a women’s chief; they have divisions, division heads, and division youth and women’s heads.

As an aside, some of these divisional posts and structures may be required by the Registrar of Societies.

One of Malaysia’s most established political columnists recently wrote a typically dramatic account of the ‘hot battles’ to watch in PKR’s elections (https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/columnists/analysis/2022/05/07/rafizi-in-proxy-power-struggle-with-anwar).

She paints the elections - fairly accurately in all likelihood - as basically one big proxy battle between Anwar Ibrahim and Rafizi Ramli.

Rafizi of course pays an amount of ‘lip service’ to Anwar, stating how he fully supports the latter’s bid to become Prime Minister. It is probably no more than an open secret however, that Rafizi likely has his own, completely different, ideas on political strategies on how to run the party.

The column mentioned above goes on to specify and highlight how various battles and various different levels are mere proxy contests between Anwar and Rafizi.

Having written on Rafizi previously (https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/columnists/all-the-pieces-matter/2022/03/20/are-fighters-the-answer-), I’m not here today to comment on this particular competition and split.

I’m here today to ask: Are these kinds of contests productive?

A lot of energy and resources go into party elections. In some other big parties, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that there are millions and millions of ringgit involved.

To what end?

In the old days especially, and perhaps even now, the concept was simple: if you won a high post, and your party was in the government, this justified you being appointed to say, becoming a minister.

The higher your post, the more prestigious your ministry. Winning the deputy presidency of Umno for instance made you a ‘natural’ choice for a high-ranking post like the Minister of Education or Minister of Finance.

Outside of establishing some sort of hierarchy, pecking order, and system of ‘entitlement’, we should perhaps be asking: what good are these contests?

If one individual triumph over another in a divisional contest, in some parties, it has implications over things like who the division nominates for national posts and so on.

But what implications does it have for the rakyat?

In my humble opinion: precious little.

It seems like an indictment of just how feudal our society has become if every single election at every level mostly boils down to which feudal master you’re aligned to.

If all that matters is which leader you’re aligned to (for example, Anwar or Rafizi), then really why bother having the rest of the elections at all?

We should also take into consideration how divisive such elections can be, especially in our current day and age, with its rampant toxicity and polarisation - aided by social media and other echo chambers.

For some time now, I have been interested in the work of David von Reybrouck, who wrote a book titled “Against Elections: The case for democracy”.

The idea he explores is how elections are actually bad for democracy.

This can obviously sound extremely counter-intuitive, but the general idea is that when we think of competitive voting as the be-all and end all of the democratic process, we inherently make democracy an extremely competitive, combative, and confrontational process.

There is no doubt that one ‘good thing’ about elections is that it gives us the ability to vote out bad leaders. But the year is 2022, and we needn’t limit ourselves to only one way of doing things.

Perhaps the better way to think about voting is to think of it as the final resort in a long democratic process, instead of its very first step.

Perhaps a better first step is to focus on how to build consensus.

This way emphasises trying to listen to everyone’s views, and working hard to find solutions that meet as many needs as possible, so that the final solutions are as inclusive and mutually beneficial as possible.

In this scenario, voting is a tool used only when we have truly and conclusively been unable to reach a consensus decision.

The fierce polarisation that comes with constantly confrontational elections often leads to burnt bridges and irreconcilable differences. I think this goes a long way in explaining why politics can be so very dysfunctional both here in Malaysia and in the rest of the world.

If we want to transition from dysfunctional politics to a functional, healthy democracy, perhaps one of the most important things we can do is re-examine the structures and functional culture of the Malaysian political party, and think about how we can build something better in its place.

If we build a movement with the right culture and the right incentive structures (structures that incentivise consensus building instead of competition), we may just begin to solve some of the biggest problems we are facing.NATHANIEL TAN works with Projek #BangsaMalaysia. Twitter: @NatAsasi, Email: [email protected]. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy.