Party Convention
Monday, 20-03-2006
The leaders.
The delegates.
Our party convention was held at the Federal Hotel yesterday. A day earlier we had our 40th Anniversary celebration.
Earlier in the week the NST had a mischievous story under the heading: Guan Eng’s fortunes tied to amendments.
The article claimed “Some senior DAP members and younger supporters are planning to challenge the proposed changes [to the party constitution].”
It went on to say “the failure of letting it be passed may take the party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng to the political doldrums in Malacca after a telling defeat in recent state committee elections, another notch down”
The way it was written gave outsiders the impression a freak cyclone was gonna hit the convention.
I just shook my head in disappointment when I read that because what was reported was far from the truth as the whole idea of presenting the constitution amendment was to make it clear to members and public about the party vision and objectives of our political struggle.
This is part of our party reform mission and there’s nothing wrong nor sensitive about it.
Was that another “creative” story by NST when it has nothing better to do? It was never a “life and death battle” for Guan Eng as claimed.
Some members at the Convention did object to the constitution amendments, their main arguments being they thought constitution amendment was a big issue that requires more time for members to discuss and debate before it was passed by the Convention.
Their objection was based solely on the time frame and not about the proposed changes per se.
Some delegates misunderstood the reasons for the change of objective from Democratic Socialism to Social Democracy. Desipte the change the party’s core ideologies remain intact.
As, the CEC has fulfilled the seven days notice requirement stated in the party constitution, we saw no reason to defer it.
After about three hours of debate (including the CEC members’ reply), the amendment was passed with 64 votes for, 8 votes against and 2 abstained.
The convention ended at 7.40pm. The good thing about the convention was that the party leaders and members debated on the new phrase used in the constitution, i.e. Social Democracy, it was like an ideological discourse. It was interesting and it was good to see leaders and members discuss it in earnest.
The other issue which the media portrayed as sensitive was the one where the party was to “uphold and affirm Bahasa Malaysia as national language, and guarantee the obligation duty to promote other languages…”.
Too bad for them no delegate talked about it at all. This shows everyone accepts this position.
Until the next Convention, this is Teresa Kok reporting for Teresa Blog. 
Re-nown lawyer of the ‘60s PG Lim and I at our party’s 40th Anniversary celebration. She saved the lives 13 who were accused of treason during Confrontation (konfrontasi) period with Indonesia.
Teh tarik satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima, enam, tujuh…
In a way, DAP’s ideology of malaysia for all malaysian is noble but with our everything-is-race-based and “first world facility and third world mentality”, not many of the population will understand, or bother to attemp to understand what DAP stands for. (whether they agree or not is another thing)
We Malaysians care more about tudung, free fried chicken, grand sale and petrol price increase, among other things.
A just, merit-based and result orientated society is a must for us. We can no longer rely on political stability, relatively low labour costs and a few good roads to attract FDI and attain better standard of living.
As we are all consumed by unwillingness to do away with corruption, wasting time on deciding whether to wear tudung or not, China, India, Vietnam and Thailand will surge ahead of us in economic development. We only have Indonesia to commiserate with.
Comment by lee wee tak_ — Friday, 24-03-2006 @ 07: 48.34
NST makes all the comments about Guan Eng and DAP simple because they have no idea what a demoratic process is like even if it was standing in front of them. These guys have never really seen it in action. They watch American TV and movies and sensational news and think they know how things work in a real democratic society. What they don’t know is that even in the US, most homeless, criminals and drug dealers and Enron-white-collar criminals in the US would still be willing to die for their country. Sadly speaking even we cannot say the same for our ministers and other so-called successful people in our societies much less the poor and unfortunate in this country.
Comment by Bigjoe — Monday, 27-03-2006 @ 16: 57.04