GE15: Reduce the musical chairs game

It’s a pretty standard practice in Malaysian politics to move candidates around to different seats.

It is also of course common to have all sorts of controversies about who gets retained as candidates, and who gets dropped, or transferred out to unwinnable seats.

News today is rife with drama about candidates like Khairy Jamaluddin, Charles Santiago and Wong Tack.

When assessing whether moving candidates around or replacing them are good things, we come back to the question of what the essential function of an elected representative is.

If we are cognisant of realities on the ground, we must acknowledge at least two different answers to this question.

The first is what elected representatives were originally ‘designed’ to do. When we say designed here, we are in a sense talking back to the early origins of representative democracy, especially within a Westminster context.

Technically speaking, elected representatives in Westminster systems are legislators. They are elected to law making bodies such as the Dewan Rakyat or the various state assemblies, and are empowered to vote on laws.

I would say that this actually makes up a relatively small part of an elected representative’s job, in present times.

The ‘bigger’ job that most elected representatives do, they are meant to do only once: choose a head of government. (At the rate Malaysia is going though, they may have to choose a new one every week!)

These two functions can be said to be in the official job description of an elected representative.

What people expect from elected representatives here in Malaysia however has little or nothing to do with the above - especially their first function as lawmakers.

Instead, the average mindset with regards to electing representatives in Malaysia seems to have feudal undertones.

The thinking generally seems to be: If I vote for you, I expect you to take care of me.

Of course there are some variations, say for example in terms of rural versus urban constituencies. I would hazard however, that more than half of our electorate think this way about their elected representatives.

“Take care’ in this sense generally means things like providing as much welfare and aid as possible to constituents, solving problems like fixing potholes, and sorting out any problems that involve the government.

Some political commentators respond to this state of affairs by ‘scolding’ and ‘educating’ voters, and trying to preach about how this is not the way voters should ‘think’ about politics, democracy, and who to vote for.

I take a slightly different approach. I think instead of pushing for voters to align themselves with the ‘expectations’ of these imported democracies, perhaps we should adjust our democracies to match what people want from their leaders.

Noting this mismatch between what people expect and what elected representatives are designed and empowered to do, let’s try to look at how political parties make decisions about candidates.

Parties seem to like waiting until the last minute to reveal candidates, especially when there is shuffling or replacements involved. I suppose in their minds, this is a strategic matter, and is all about maximising chances of victory.

How does community service play into these calculations?

It looks like parties feel that wherever candidates are shuffled, they want voters to believe that the party machinery will provide the same level of service to a constituency, no matter who the candidate is.

I have always found this to be a strange assumption.

I have always wondered as well what happens to all the work a candidate has done in a constituency when he or she gets sent elsewhere to contest.

I think about bonds and relationships that have been built, roots grown in the community, and so on. Don’t they all go to waste, essentially?

Given the very personal nature of service to the community, I generally find it hard to believe that a party can really provide the same depth of service from a new candidate, as opposed to one who has done good work in the constituency for an extended time.

One exception could perhaps be when a protege of the representative who has been assisting in the constituency takes over, perhaps like the case of PKR's Fahmi Fadzli and Nurul Izzah Anwar in Lembah Pantai. That perhaps makes a little more sense.

Otherwise, this constant musical chairs seem to reflect and assumption that elections are more about star power than they are about working for and with communities, building strong relationships over time.

I really don’t know enough about any of the hot seats in which candidates are being controversially dropped to add anything meaningful to the debates or gossip.

In some cases, it’s possible that there are representatives who are more popular with their constituents than with their parties. It’s equally possible that there are some cases with representatives that have a strong national profile, but a less stellar record when it comes to grassroots work.

Moving forward, perhaps parties can look into more transparent ways of tracking these metrics, so that debates surrounding the changing of candidates do not descend in to one person’s word against another.

For me personally, I think the most beneficial metric to prioritise, regardless of the ‘original design’ of democracy or what not, should be an individual’s track record of serving and adding value to the community.

Such people some times have much lower national profiles than those who are very loud and present in the debates, but have a much higher impact on the lives of the people they work with.

NATHANIEL TAN works with Projek #BangsaMalaysia. Twitter: @NatAsasi, Email: [email protected]. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Sinar Daily.