The timing of this weekend’s DAP Annual Congress – the last of any major party before GE13 – couldn’t be worse. In just the past few weeks we have had Chinese hair salon owners fined over Kelantan’s gender separation policies, a teenage Chinese boy summonsed for giving his girlfriend a piggy-back in a Kota Baru Park and the extraordinarily frank admission from party President Karpal Singh that such Islamist muscle-flexing by PAS could lead to his party being “annihilated” at GE13.
As a result of all this the Congress could be entertaining viewing for the casual observer except for one fact; the casual observer won’t be in attendance. Unlike Umno which stages it’s General Assembly for the benefit of far-flung voters and not just elite delegates DAP conducts its event shrouded in secrecy. Once the opening statements are over, the media and public observers are thrown out.
And given DAP’s present fortunes that’s a real shame because at this event it must address a fundamental dilemma of genuine concern to voters – how can it connect with its supporters, most of whom are Chinese, given that it is in coalition with a party hell-bent on introducing an Islamist agenda that has so far overwhelmingly impacted on Chinese? It must now question its very existence as part of Pakatan Rakyat.
This means it has to have a proper debate on the issue and not just resort to its normal tactic when PAS shows its true colours which is to wheel out weary Karpal Singh to explain, in dry legalistic fashion, why voters (and Congress delegates) have nothing to fear. That won’t work anymore. Voters do have much to fear if they happen to be Chinese and non-Muslim. The evidence is all around us and is irrefutable.
But despite the tough conversation that must be had party advisor Lim Kit Siang released a confident, almost breezy statement ahead of the jamboree.
“Let the 16th DAP National Congress be a historic curtain-raiser to the ‘hundred days to Putrajaya’ campaign for Malaysians to create history and usher in a new, truly united, democratic, just and prosperous Malaysia under a Pakatan Rakyat Malaysian Government in the 13th General Elections,” he wrote.
All well and good until he went onto explain the mathematics of DAP’s and Pakatan’s quest for power which reveals a starker electoral battleground.
Pakatan Rakyat needs to win at least 70 percent of the three million newly registered voters to take Putrajaya. Sixty percent of these voters are aged below 30, they are mainly urban, and DAP better hope not too many of the young Chinese electors identify with the young hairdressers recently targeted in Kelantan.
Should DAP fail to secure the lion’s share of these three million voters and lose just one percent of the one million voters who swung in 2008, not only will BN win, Kit Siang believes, but it would also regain its two-thirds majority.
On that note he echoed Umno President Najib Razak’s warning from the Umno General Assembly not to make the Mitt Romney mistake of taking his eye off the middle ground and focussing on the so-called base. Young urban voters are the target for both sides at GE13.
Kit Siang has always been one to say it as he sees it but given that the Annual Congress is also the chance to energise the party faithful it is a remarkably downbeat picture that he paints in the light of his “100 days to Putrajaya” rhetoric.
According to his own best case scenario Pakatan Rakyat will take Government with just 125 out of 222 Dewan Rakyat seats, meaning it would just be the flimsiest majority in the nation’s history: Just a few defections and a PAS protest vote away from collapse.
So aside from PAS, Pakatan Rakyat and its poll prospects, what are the other issues that DAP might want to discuss behind closed doors? Karpal Singh could make the Lim Dynasty and Teresa Kok squirm if he turns again to one man, one seat. He sees it as a matter of fairness to the voters while those holding down state and federal positions see it as an insurance policy against “annihilation” in one of their elected houses.
Then there is the chance that disaffected Indian members will want to air their grouses about the increasing “Chinesification” of the party. If they choose to do so they will be facing more Chinese delegates than ever in the hall amid reports of a record number of invitations at this event bearing Chinese names.
This event is also where DAP re-elects its leadership which normally amounts to the reaffirmation of the Lim Dynasty. Will anyone have the guts to run against Lim senior and junior? It mostly results in political oblivion for the unlucky individual involved. Let’s see if Selangor State Assembly Speaker Teng Chang Khim wants to take on secretary general Lim Guan Eng. He has nothing to lose because Guan Eng already loathes him and he remains firmly on the outer.
Finally there is the proposal to give two veteran Malay leaders – Ahmad Ton and Zulkifli Mohd Noor – vice president’s posts in a bid to burnish DAP’s Malay credentials. This is an attempt to further promote the myth that the party actually holds any relevance for Malay voters. But given it is now more Chinese than ever, it would be amazing of the Congress bothered to nod along with this ludicrous charade.
Last year’s event involved a protest outside the Congress venue by supporters of Dr P Ramasamy. Such open dissent stunned organiser and the effects of that revolt echoed through the pasty for the next six months.
This time, expect the dissent to be happening behind closed doors. DAP has tough conversations that need to take place and if delegates choose not to speak up for the sake of party unity (or pure fear) then the event will be an opportunity wasted so close to GE13.