An MIC branch leader (left) makes his point during a recent “rebranding” meeting.—Picture by Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 27 — The MIC branch chairman, that archetypal man always waiting on the sidelines to garland the chief but who is often “rewarded” with abuses and unfairly blamed for the party’s failures, is finally coming into his own as the party struggles to re-invent itself after suffering massive losses in Elections 2008.
Previously, the party’s 150 division chiefs were treated as kingmakers and feted as key agents of change but that mantle has now moved to the lowly branch chairmen.
The reason is that despite numerous “rebranding and reinventing” forums at posh hotels acoss the country, the division chairmen have not, in the words of one senior MIC leader, “moved one inch” to reconnect with the Tamil masses, the majority of whom voted for Pakatan Rakyat in the 2008 general election.
After a year of “re-branding” with division chairmen, the MIC inner circle has decided it was a waste of time “rebranding” them to ensure they reconnect with the Tamil masses.
The MIC division chairmen suffer from the same disease as the Umno or MCA division chairmen — they are on the prowl for titles, patronage, contracts, other business opportunities, directorship in GLCs and the like.
The key word for the BN parties that suffered huge losses is “re-connect”, with the masses that once dutifully lined up to cast their votes for BN but don’t anymore.
“Despite numerous the rebranding forums there is little reconnect with the Tamil masses. The key word is reconnect and how to re-connect with the Tamil masses,” one MIC leader said.
“In the new thinking, the branch chairman is gaining prominence. He has the members and he is the one face-to-face with the masses,” the leader said.
“It is through him that we can re-connect… he is the key,” the leader said, adding the MIC leadership itself is undergoing a re-thinking on how to reconnect and “the way we should do it is through the youths in the branches.”
The party is telling branch chairmen to get acquainted with the new weapons of political mobilisation — emails, Twitter and Facebook — in a move to win over those upwardly mobile, IT-savvy voters, not just among Indians but among all Malaysians.
“Everyone is a voter and we need everyone’s votes to win. We need to reach every group of voters, from the high-tech voter to the low-tech voter,” said MIC deputy president Datuk G. Palanivel.
“We only need a five per cent swing among voters to win back the seats we lost,” he told a group of 30 MIC branch chairmen from Subang constituency at a meeting last week.
The newly re-elected Palanivel is touring the party’s divisions to push the MIC grassroots to re-invent and become effective grassroots political leaders.
The party is trying to answer key questions like, “Who are really MIC members?”; “How many of them are voters?”; “ Where do they vote?”; Why they did not vote in 2008?”; “Are they still on the MIC membership roll?”; and “How will they vote in the next general election?”
These are key questions that not just the MIC but all Barisan Nasional political parties want answered adequately and accurately.
Umno wants its allies to give honest answers because BN’s seat allocation for the next general election will depend on the answers.
“If we can’t show we have the support of grassroots Indians, then we are not going to get the seats to contest,” Palanivel told the gathering.
“We need to know the answers for ourselves also, to gauge our strength and plan re-building strategies,” he said.
Palanivel, who has been criticised for inaction since his Oct 10 election as deputy president for a second three-year term, is touring the country and meeting branch chairmen to infuse new thinking and give them confidence to take up the battle with Pakatan Rakyat.
MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu is fond of making membership claims ranging from 600,000 to 800,000 members.
Likewise the PPP and others, including the seventh-month old Malaysia Makkal Sakthi Party, all claim membership strength ranging into the hundreds of thousands.
If so many Indians are MIC members, how is it that the party lost so massively? It can only mean many of the members “exist” only in the form of names provided by branch chairmen to beef up their numbers.
“We must be prepared to write off 25 per cent of our membership. Their names are on our rolls but their hearts are somewhere else,” said another senior MIC leader on condition of anonymity.
A major clean up of the MIC membership is also under way as part of the rectification campaign.
While other political parties like the DAP and Umno are rushing to recruit new members, the MIC has just started to clean up its membership.
“Getting new members is not yet a priority, not yet,” the MIC leader said adding, “We have to clean up our house first.”
The problems the party faces in winning back the Tamil masses is massive and could be seen in the faces of the 35 MIC branch chairmen gathered at the meeting.
They were in a grumpy mood — the BN’s trouncing in Selangor had taken away whatever little prestige and patronage they had enjoyed before under BN rule.
They had also lost status and face in their kampungs and settlements where, as MIC branch chairmen, they had once enjoyed clout as agents of the ruling party.
“We have become nothing… how do we reconnect with the masses?” asked one branch chairman at the meeting. “Everything (patronage) is grabbed by the division chairmen and his people… we get nothing!”
“Rebranding has to start at the top of the party not at the bottom,” he said.
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