Nanyang Press, Editorial, 25-08-2014

PKR held their Annual General Assembly on the 23rd of August 2014, only 790 attended out of the 3740 eligible representatives and the attendance ratio was merely 21%. Under the rules stated in the statutes, the General Assembly is the highest decision making body in the political party, the party’s administrative objectives and directions are usually first being adopted and passed in the General Assembly.

The proceedings of the General Assembly have to be in accordance to the party statutes. However, under the extreme circumstances, the General Assembly is authorised to amend the statutes according to the rules and regulations of the Registrar of Society. Hence, the significant importance of the General Assembly.

Being the political party which is very keen in taking the leading role within Pakatan Rakyat, it is rather disappointing to witness the very low turnout rate in the PKR General Assembly. At the height of the current trying times of the Selangor Menteri Besar’s replacement crisis, more than 2/3 party representatives opted to miss the General Assembly, it is clearly an early warning signal that cannot be ignored by the PKR.

The attendance rate in a General Assembly is sufficient to allow the outside world to have, to a very large extent, knowledge of the strength and its sphere of influence of a particular political party. When its own members do not even have the motivation to attend the general assembly, how can this particular political party warrant the support of the non-members or the general public?

Within BN, UMNO has never encountered such embarrassing low turnout during their general assembly. This is no doubt very much related to its significant role in managing the federal administration. On the other hand, if a political party cannot even have their general assembly conducted properly, how can they expect others to have any high expectations from them!

PAS is one of the political parties that that conducted their annual general assembly successfully. The attendance rate of PAS annual general assembly fared quite similar to that of UMNO. With regards to the members’ cohesiveness, PAS is far ahead from the other domestic political parties.

The strangest appeal for Pakatan Rakyat is to take down BN and take over the Putrajaya but if we look closer, PAS is not as eager even though they do not object to this common objective. To this political party which has religion as their cornerstone, nothing is more important than to establish an Islamic state.

For the establishment of a theocracy state, many people especially the non-Muslims would beg to differ but there is no denying the fact that the current PAS is still strong and valid. The main reason for that is because the party leadership has always been consistent in pursuing the ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state, allowing the party to gain many loyal supporters.

Besides PKR, the attendance rate of some political parties’ general assembly was not consistent, and is very much depending on their party election and completely according to the status of their party election. To be more precisely put, their general assembly’s attendance is proportionate to the party election candidate’s individual needs.

Whenever during the fierce competitive election year, these political parties will be able to witness a phenomenon high turnout rate. Once the heat of the party election has subsided, the attendance rate of the general assembly will drastically declined.

The attendance rate of the general assembly is not only closely linked to the loyalty of party members, it also reflects their leaders’ political commitment and leadership qualities. If the leaders always have their powerbase and career as their preference, they do not care about the annual general assembly attendance and only begin to entice the members to attend the general assembly during party election year. One wonders what kind of future will such political party hold?

With PAS’s ultimate determination of setting up of an Islamic state, it sets as a role model for the respective political parties in the country. Without any prime objective, the political party will only be a venue of power and interest struggle and, thus, the party members naturally have no slightest interest to attend the general assembly.

Original Source: 从大会出席率论政党