A point to ponder

Last Wednesday, I got the chance to attend a political talk with my friend Rozairee. The topic of the talk was 'New Political Landscape: Challenges of the future'. The speakers were from PKR, Pas, and UMNO (Their names would not be shown due to certain purposes) . The talk or should I say forum was conducted in such a manner that the organisers has arranged the speakers to talk in order of PKR and Pas taking the offensive stance and the poor guy UMNO would go last taking the defensive stance. Inadvertently, this arrangement showed how far sighted the organisers were in ensuring that the audience would get a pretty much heated debate. Kudos to the organisers in respect to that.

However, even their far sighted arrangements couldn't provoke the speakers to wage an all out war and throw chairs at one another as they discussed each issue maturely and the tension in the room is almost nil. All that could be felt is the excitement as each and every one of them humorously ridiculed one another and surprisingly themselves. They were given 20-30 mins each and were followed by Q&A. Unfortunately, I had to leave early(11.20) as I had class the next morning. With this, I bring to you the summary of the talk and my own take of it.


PKR:

Introduced the concept of Old Politics vs New Media. Old Politics is when the government uses any means at its disposal to achieve its goals i.e. control on media, regulations and etc. New Media however is the emergence of alternative medias due to the partial stance taken by the so-called Mainstream Media i.e. blogs. He stressed, although old politics may be effective previously, with the presence of new media, it will become irrelevant. If a certain group is reluctant to change its ways, in other words stick to the method of old politics, it will definitely ends up like the Barisan Nasional in the recent general election. Malaysia is heading towards a dual party system.

Pas:

Described himself as party member who prefers working in the background rather than in the limelight, he showed to us what Pas is really all about. If you think that they are Islamist radicals who wear rolls of cloths as turbans and would do anything to form an Islamic Government while in the process alienate non-Muslims, then, sorry to say that you are absolutely wrong. He enlightened us that the Islamic State concept upholds freedom of speech, right of every human being and would be non discriminatory. Most of us fear this concept because we take the form(Islam State) over substance(good governance). Whereas the substance is the most important thing.

UMNO:

He admits that there are wrongdoings in UMNO in fact in his own division. Regarding the result of the general election, he stood by the notion like others in his league that the voters voted against Barisan Nasional(BN) and not for Pakatan Rakyat(PR). Although UMNO may be corrupted and perceived as irrelevant, he emphasised that UMNO is still relevant and crucial if there is to be a two party system. He will try with others that share his view to reform UMNO from the inside and assured all that UMNO will be here for the 50 years to come.


R.Iskandar:

This forum shows that individuals from different parties could sit down together and find a common ground for the benefit of the people. I call on those politicians in power out there to heed their colleagues here. The time for campaigning is over. It is now time to work together, not the time to sabotage one another. The federal government should give the 5 PR-led states the same treatment as the other states. Don't punish them because they deem you unfit of managing their states.