Gerakan veep said party not ready for general elections

According to Gerakan vice-president Chia Kwang Chye recently, the party is way behind in its preparation to face the next general elections.

According to Chia, Gerakan which suffered the worst ever defeat in 2008 and losing its power based in Penang to Pakatan Rakyat, was not ready to battle the currently stable Penang Pakatan Rakyat state government who had since 2008 introduced many reforms in the administration and the state as well.

Gerakan lost all its thirteen Penang state legislative assembly seats it had contested in the last general elections in March 2008. Penang state was formerly Gerakan's stronghold and its power base was focused at the state until 2008.

The speculations made by Chia had clearly demonstrated the fact that the leadership of the current Gerakan president Dr Koh Tsu Koon is ineffective in reviving the party in aftermath of the 2008 general election which saw Gerakan's worst ever loss.

After losing the Penang state to Pakatan Rakyat, the Gerakan president had previously pledged that he will not accept any senatorship nor cabinet position in order to focus his energy in reviving the party which has been badly defeated in reduced to a minor component party in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

However, Dr Koh then made about turn on his pledge and decided to accept a senatorship and the cabinet post as a minister in the prime minister's department, after Umno president Najib Razak took over the helm from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as prime minister.

With Dr Koh being away at Putrajaya as a federal minister had left the party's current low morale position unattended which had further pose a serious threat where the party could seen as further weakening without any new generation of leaders at helm.

Due to Dr Koh's continuous negligence in the party's revival efforts, several disgruntled faction in the party had began to revolt against the top leadership for their ineffectiveness in tackling the party's weaknesses. Apart from that, certain factions in the party also wanted Gerakan to leave the BN coalition like the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) and become an independent stature outside the BN and Pakatan's influences.

Apart from that, many party members are also frustrated with its party top leadership under Dr Koh of being too subservient to Umno and wanted the Gerakan to move away from the shadows of Umno who has been powerfully dominating the BN coalition for decades.

The first revolt took place in Penang when the state party delegates managed to collect sufficient signatures to convene an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) to ouster the state chairman Dr Teng Hock Nan, a staunch supporter of Dr Koh. The EGM however, failed to unseat Dr Teng from his post due to insufficient votes to do so.

Despite this, it shows that Dr Koh's leadership had began to feel the challenge and revolt in the party itself. Some of its party members had also defied orders from the central committee, and marched in support of the Bersih 2.0 rally held on 9 July 2011 at Kuala Lumpur, thus openly throwing their support behind the Bersih 2.0 and Pakatan Rakyat leaders calling for a freer and fairer elections.

Looks like Dr Koh and his team of conservatives has a lots of unanswered questions that the Gerakan delegates had previously posed to them. This was openly admitted by some party delegates when they were interviewed earlier.

We wish to give all members and delegates of Gerakan, you have only one choice, either you want to maintain the conservative leadership under Dr Koh or to elect an entirely new sets of leadership to takeover and rejuvenate the party. The choices are in your hands right now.

You can make it come through at the states' annual delegates conferences and the national delegates conference as well.