Reinventing BN and Pakatan post GE13

Even as dust begin to settle over the 13th General Election, both the Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat coalitions now face the challenge of continually being relevant to Malaysian voters.

For BN, its chairman Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Sunday that he would be discussing with the coalition’s leaders how to “move forward and reject politics of (religious and racial) extremism”.

Najib is now calling for more moderate and accomodatives policies, and it remains to be seen how BN itself will change despite him expressing that ‘change’ can come from within.

Asked about the future of BN politics and how it can reinvent itself, former Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said “BN has been good at giving pengharapan pembangunan (developmental hope) while it is struggling with pengharapan demokrasi (democratic hope),” Saifuddin told Astro AWANI.

The former deputy minister and Temerloh MP explained that BN has well established expertise in helping the rakyat with fundamental needs, such as facilities and infrastructure, but only had limited experience in bringing about higher ideals and rights.

Saifuddin that a problem BN-Umno faced during GE13 was that when faced with “Ubah”, there is no real answer to respond to it.

“Najib’s answer that change is coming from within is not being filtered down. The word ‘transformation’ for many BN leaders is just a slogan but they do not live it,” he said.

Saifuddin stressed that one very important thing which can reform BN was to fully implement direct membership in BN.

“To me, the most important is to have more direct memberships to BN. I speak to a lot of youths and they want that. In a way, it is fresh, cool and has a nice packaging to it,” he said.

He explained that each component party all have their respective baggages, including having racial elements and heavy party structures that do not allow young talents to move up.

“We need a new BN. Direct membership is contitionalised but it is not being implemented in a big way. I’m not talking about closing shop for the component parties, but we need to open up to have more direct BN members... and even those who leave their respective component parties.”

The Umno supreme council member also cited an example of a young man who is very talented but might take years within the Umno system to move up the ranks. “That’s why Umno has its own historical baggages and needs to look back and evaluate itself.”

Asked if Pakatan, in this respect, had an easier time making use of their younger members as they were smaller and more limber, Saifuddin agreed. “Pakatan is ahead that is the reality.”

Saifuddin said that one thing that he could see from GE13 was that two-thirds majority was no longer an issue, and he said this was a healthy development. “I wish to see Parliament that is non partisan, where we come together to debate ideas across political divides.”

Meanwhile, for Pakatan Rakyat, PKR lawyer Yusmadi Yusoff said that he felt that the coalition’s future is to move away from personalities and begin to nurture and collaborate with young leaders.

Yusmadi said that the framework and structure of Pakatan Rakyat in these past five years has become evolved to be more organised, despite Pakatan having partners with different ideologies and having to deal with new experiences.

“Kudos to them for achieving that. However, despite having good structure, there is too much emphasis on personalities, which becomes the centre of gravity.”

Asked if older leaders such as Opposition and PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim should step aside, Yusmadi said that was not ideal.

“Now we have young and talented people in the core leadership like Rafizi (Ramli), Nurul (Izzah), Shamsul Iskandar (Mohd Akin)... Liew Chin Tong from DAP, they are young but they represent the party in policy-making. The way forward is to have the veterans collaborate with the young,” he said.

Taking a swipe at BN, Yusmadi said comparatively, the BN has very limited talents and its structure does not give opportunities for young people to reach the top.