Time For A New BR Manifesto On FreedomCheah Kah Seng 30/7/2001. Logo section amended 13/8/2001 Yes, BR, as in "Barisan Rakyat", the name that should be for the coalition so far known as "Barisan Alternatif". There should be a new draft of Manifesto of the Rakyat (MOR) to be presented 12 months from now to each member party's general assembly for approval by a vote of simple majority. The MOR, to be thrashed out by subcommittees from member parties, should detail the new coalition name, logo, manifesto, "statements of differences", and an appendix on a system of dividing election candidacies. The MOR’s top ideology should be freedom from human oppression. The MOR should be clearly aimed at General Election 2004. The MOR buys time, but at the same time it is as constructive an exercise as you can get, while turning today's little crisis into a great opportunity to strengthen the BA/BR and give the BN a big haircut in the next election. "Rakyat" - because the People are indeed the Boss of the Nation. Don't let the Nation trample over the Rakyat's rights. The notion of Nation should be subservient to the Rakyat. The concept of Nation has too often been abused to rob the People of justice, democracy, and spiritual freedom. In the name of the Nation, more atrocities have been committed that history books dare to tell. Witness our abuse of the machineries of government, law, and the economy in the name of "national security". The Rakyat shall prevail. Rakyat is the "demo" in democracy. Rakyat is for whom justice is sought. And only Rakyat can worship spiritually; never the Nation can. What more common interest than the People to tie together the coalition? Some may say the name "Rakyat" gives too much credence to an old party about to merge its own name into history books. But what more suitable name than "Rakyat" to call forth the movement that will be reborn at the same time that that party so steadfastly fighting for the great principles of democracy, justice and the Constitution - so selflessly that it would give its own life to forge a stronger front against a cruel and unjust regime - is to retire it's worldly form, name and logo? Structure and procedure for drafting the MOR The MOR should be drafted over a series of meetings over the next 12 months, among a coalition committee dedicated to the MOR, supported by each party's own committees and working subcommittees who must be able to meet their counterparts from other parties in low profile manners. Parties may not object to other parties' appointment of delegates. The exercise has multiple benefits: It will train the subcommittee members and younger leaders, familiarize them with the Manifesto for presentation back to the grassroot, exposing them to GE2004 campaign issues, and familiarize them with coalition counterparts which will be important for future cooperation. Each party's committee will not only have to work out the draft MOR, but will have to campaign for the approval of the final draft. In opposition, each party will also form an independent Evaluation Committee which will vote and decide on a positive or negative recommendation to its party general assembly, then argue for its decision. If the evaluation committee happens to agree with the MOR, it still has to highlight all issues of doubt. Any approved MOR should not be viewed too rigidly as a "constitution", but should be amendable every 4-5 years, mid-term between General Elections. Statements of Differences Importantly, the MOR should include subsections for each member party to state its own "prime directive" and differences. This is the space for each party to clearly state its differences with other coalition members. The "statements of differences" are not self-contradictory cop-out clauses, but are operational guidelines when things come to a head. They will form the basis on which a party and its members may speak openly, campaign, and vote in the Parliament against the BR coalition on key issues of differences, without being disciplined by the coalition or party whip. This is the section traditional supporters look to for assurance. This is the section political analysts look to to predict parliamentary votes on controversial issues. General election candidacy allocation The MOR drafting exercise should include an appendix on GE2004 candidacy allocation method or system among the BR coalition members. This section should not be part of the proper body of the manifesto because of the controversy and in-fighting it will most likely generate among coalition members, rapidly changing political landscape, some need for secrecy, and the need to amend it frequently. Rather, it should be a separate document, an appendix, perhaps titled "Candidacy Plan Version 2002", refined yearly. One approach takes two stages. First stage is to allocate total points to each member party by some broad objective measures, such as a mix of active membership size, historical voting patterns, raw negotiation, and more effectively for the long term, survey or opinion polling. In the second stage, each party then vote these points to bid for seat candidacy contested by other member parties. Each party will have to put its money (use up bid points) where the mouth is, and will have to examine its priority, and engage in give and take. This system also divides the horse trading into two stages (total point allocation and bidding). The system will still be subject to great heart aches, especially in stage one (total point allocation), but that comes early and not close to election time. Two procedures can help reduce conflict. First, agree to a punishment factor to be executed after election, where overall failure to win seats in GE2004 will reduce total point allocation for GE2009 by a factor of greater than 1x. This threat of punishment is to forestall member party wasting energy trying to get points it cannot use effectively. But failure must be calculated nationwide, and not by individual seat, because the BN appears to be targeting its dirty tactics against individual opposition candidates who are high-profile leaders. Second, set up limited number of second-tier points, which a disinterested third member party may bid to settle a tug of war between two member parties. This in reality will often mean PAS settling candidacy disputes between DAP and Keadilan, but may encourage the emergence of a strong East Malaysian wing, because its power will be proportionally large and quickly becoming significant. Any candidate allocation should be reviewed every year or two, and by a target date during an election year long before the parliament dissolution. Total point allocation should be reviewed less often, and should be timed away from bidding. While a pre-selected candidate may start preparing the ground early, he or she should be mentally prepared that the seat could easily be reshuffled away due to compromise at the center. Implications on the Islamic state issue The MOR or the allocation result could agree, for example, that PAS would not contest for more than a certain percentage of parliamentary seats, which due to electoral reality is a redundant statement, but in principle would preclude the risk of PAS ?though with the best intentions - accidentally forming any authoritarian Islamic state. Such a MOR would become the best assurance and the only logical way to prevent a repressive Islamic state, while the BN structure would surely have failed on this count. Leaving the BR would logically and in fact create a greater risk of an authoritarian Islamic state. While the MOR is drafted, the DAP would maintain more effective communication if it remains within the BA/BR. If the DAP leaves the BR 12 months later after failing to secure a MOR that would satisfy its members, it would still have about two years to prepare for GE2004 independently. Leaving now, but remaining in a limbo-cordial relationship may continue to be damaging to its credibility. Current manifesto The current manifesto details were little discussed publicly after GE1999. The next manifesto should better separate the presentation of the ideological/strategic section from the policy section. The policy section could have its outlines better distilled for presentation, first presenting an outline, then dwelling into the details Restriction on "controversial" former members The MOR should clearly abolish the restriction of "controversial" former members joining other member parties. This is one of the most undemocratic clauses that will discredit the BR slowly but surely. Instead, whenever a controversial figure has joined another party, the new party's immediate superior should be held responsible for disciplining the new member. The whole hierarchical party line should be progressively held responsible as the lower ranks fail to maintain discipline for unreasonable behaviors. There could be special disciplinary committee within one's own party dealing with cross-party bashing, codified investigative procedure and appeal procedure. Without even that, how can BA/BR rule a country effectively and justly? Logo As for logo, I recommend some abstract graphic of an "eye" of knowledge. While the eye will sound "proprietary" and bias in favour of Keadilan, it is actually the most valuable, and will be the most effective and widely recognizable. The new eye should look recognizably different from Keadilan logo in terms of patterns and color. It should be viewed as the abstract eye of knowledge, that knows all, that knows of justice, the vision of a knowledge-based civilisation - and an information-era vision of technology and progress similar to DAP’s rocket. An abstract eye is naturally balance in shape, and the curves will be more contemporary, credible, and softer than BN's discredited, stiff, and incurably imbalanced scale. [The next 3 paragraphs are added on 13 Aug 2001] Another set of logo possibilities relates to colours. The three BA/BR parties' logo colours happen to be close to the three primary colours of Red, Green and Blue. (Keadilan's blue is not pure blue, but some sort of turquoise, ie, full-strength blue and half-strength green. PAS' green is about three-quarter-strength green. But these do not matter when they are combined). In this second idea, the BR logo could comprise three overlapping circles of the party colours. Where they overlap, there are the colours of rainbow, and the center of white. Potential problem would be the ballot paper, or when a black-and-white version is called for. In such situations, the logo could be reduced to just three ring, or three dark circles with an overlapping center of white, which should be balanced and clearly recognizable. The three dark circles should be sufficiently large to avoid appearing like a pile of beans. Freedom as the uniting ideology For all the talks of different ideologies among the BA/BR parties, there is one underlying common ideologies which most fail to emphasize. It is freedom. But like the well-intended yet vaguely defined "human rights", freedom is one of the most misunderstood and greedily defined concepts, which causes it to fail as an ideology. Most people dare not propose freedom as the top ideology because of the half-cooked understanding about freedom, the fear of freedom without bound, leading to irresponsibility, and to destruction. But we only need to narrowly define freedom to mean "freedom from arbitrary rule by another human being", or the freedom from human oppression, the freedom from persecution, to make the ideology work. Not freedom from the Earth’s gravity, which is unrealistic. Not freedom from all responsibilities, or freedom to destroy, when that would oppress and impose arbitrary rules on fellow human beings. Not freedom from hunger, all needs and wants when that would be greed against nature and fellow men and women. Yes, there should be a collective safety net to protect against abject poverty, hunger, and unfortunate consequences of random chance and natural disasters. But there should not be freedom from working hard for capable man and women, because it would arbitrarily take from other man and women, hence oppress them, creating injustice. While the belief in this freedom does not preclude us from reaching a political compromise to temporarily take resources and opportunity from one group to help another group to correct legacy injustice, this belief does continuously highlight the fact that that political compromise carries with it an ongoing cost of new injustice. By sticking to that belief of freedom from oppression, it makes us cognizant that the burden is on all who have compromised to find creative approaches to right the historical injustice as quickly as possible, and to minimize a modern injustice. Almost invariably, the needed creative approaches involve promoting freedom in commerce, education, social and spiritual discourse. Restrictions and protection have invariably spiraled down the black hole of failure, social bribery, concentration of power, and eventually political terrors. Everything worth fighting for emanates from this essential freedom from oppression by other man and women: Freedom to worship, to express, to associate, to information, to participate in democracy which is but a great tool to reach freedom, to seek justice, to educate our children as we want to, to run business without oppressive monopoly and collusive players or predators, to live in peace with nature, to work for the most appreciative employer, to learn, to move away from oppressive social hierarchy; the freedom from fear, the freedom from a police state, the freedom from oppressive laws, freedom from the demands for political, social and business bribes, the freedom from being taxed to serve and salvage a few well-connected elites, the freedom from religious oppression by human clergy. Yet there is no conflict with religion because all this essential freedom asks for is the prevention of human oppression. It is more specific than the broad and vague “human rights? and actually is a clearer and workable definition of human rights. Thus the ideology of freedom, more specifically, "freedom from oppression by other human being" or "freedom from arbitrary rule by other men and women" should be elevated in a new BR manifesto if BR is to be sustainable and successful, and if Malaysia and the region is to prosper culturally, spiritually, and economically.
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