KUALA LUMPUR, July 12 — MCA, the second largest Barisan Nasional (BN) component party, is set to implement direct election of the party president during the next party election scheduled for 2011.
Its national organising secretary, Yoo Wei How, said the party had completed a proposal for party re-structuring to enable direct election to be implemented, with the proposal set to be tabled in the next MCA presidential council meeting.
The MCA presidential election will be carried out by about 2,000 delegates who will cast their votes to decide on who should lead the party.
However, under the new proposal, the election of the party president will be extended to all party branches and divisional level where the ordinary member can elect the party president directly.
"I will present it in the next presidential council meeting, then get the presidential council's approval where they will pass the message to the state leaders for more brain-storming and obtain feedback from the grassroots.
"We have a few proposals on how to restructure our organisation to allow direct election to be implemented. As we want to do it in a transparent manner and with participation from the grassroots, we will carry out an exercise to get feedback from party members on our proposals," Yoo told Bernama in an interview.
However, he refused to give details of the proposal, except to say that it consisted of several recommendations on how the system of direct election should be carried out, and the mechanism to implement it.
He said it could not be revealed as yet, as it was still subject to approval by the presidential council, as well as the grassroots.
Yoo said after the presidential council gave its approval, the proposal would be released to the grassroots for feedback before it was adopted. He was confident the model would be ready by year-end.
He said MCA had studied various models, including those from Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang (KMT) which once had two million members before it was defeated in the 2000 presidential election.
Following that, the KMT carried out a re-registration campaign and exercise where it managed to recruit about 520,000 members. Then, it conducted a second exercise, where KMT managed to increase the membership to 900,000.
After managing to re-take the government in the last year presidential election, its membership further increased to 1.2 million.
"However, we are not proposing to re-register our members... just that we will continue to clean up our membership list by other methods. At the moment, our membership stands at about 940,000, from the previous 1.08 million members.
"We have cleaned up by striking out those who did not pay their annual membership subscription fees," said Yoo.
Yoo said in the next two years it would be a "transition period" for the party as it would continue the process of cleaning up the membership list and getting party members to register as voters.
He said some party members, and even leaders, still did not understand that the party membership list was not the main concern as compared to the party’s performance in the general election.
"Some people call me up and ask, why we reduce the numbers (through the cleaning exercise) when other parties are increasing their membership. Not enough membership, how to negotiate, they said. However, I told them, as what the president has said, what MCA needs now is solid members, not that we ‘shock sendiri’ with the numbers.
"What's the point of having big numbers in the party but cannot be reflected in the general election? I know some of them want the numbers in order to sustain their political position in the party, but they do not realise the general election is a far more important and better field to do so," he said.
Explaining further, Yoo said the party would become irrelevant if it did not win in the general election and hence, the ultimate target should be the general election, not party election.
"We should learn this from the KMT. I hope the party members will also learn this fact," he added.
On cleaning up the party membership list, Yoo said it had come across "some extraordinary findings" such as more than 200 people sharing the same address and even some, without any telephone number to contact.
"Now, we have made it compulsory for applicants to provide phone numbers, otherwise their applications will be rejected. Apart from that, we will also verify the information provided, by calling up the applicant, as well as their proposer, before we approve the membership," he said.
Another change that has already taken place in the party is disallowing the opening of more branches in a particular area. Instead, new branches are encouraged to be opened in other areas.
"For example, there are more than 10 branches in a 'kampung baru' when just two branches are more than sufficient. You can always set up branches in other areas to serve more people, regardless whether it is a Chinese-majority populated area or not.
"What is the point of establishing 10, 15 or even 20 branches in one 'kampung baru'? It's just a numbers game. So, let there be more focus on the general election," he said. — Bernama
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