In this day and age, we are able to see that all over the world that people are involved in a continuous struggle for social change. We have seen it taking place in the US and in the recent past, in Japan. We ourselves had for the first time in 52 years taken a step in that direction on March 8, 2008.

With the march towards social change, we as the voting populace, are now wandering as to what our elected representatives actually stand for. Be they in the component parties of the Barisan Nasional (BN) or the Pakatan Rakyat, we have to painfully endeavour to understand and reflect upon what sort of society our elected representatives want to build.

It is imperative that our political leaders, from both sides of the political divide as it currently stands, come to their senses and be of the realisation that in aspiring for social change, political power, strength and effective representation should be clearly separated and should go beyond not just the ethic and moral divide but should as a whole encompass the ethnic, cultural, religious, nationalist, ideological, political and the socio-economic hegemony.

For some months now, we have observed the disarray in both the component parties of BN as well as in Pakatan where the acts and the conduct of the elected representatives leave much to be desired by the general populace.

In the first place, do these elected representatives ever realise that they were elected into office by the people and that their primary duty is to serve the people through their respective parties’ platform and endeavour to achieve what was stipulated in their election manifesto?

But what we are disillusioned about is the fact that instead of maintaining unity and solidarity within their respective parties, some of them like Ong Tee Keat and Chua Soi Lek of the MCA, S Samy Vellu and S Subramaniam of the MIC, Zulkifli Nordin of the PKR and Hasan Ali of PAS, to name a few, have not shown that they can work in harmony within their respective parties social policies and attempt to build a collective leverage of power within their parties.

Sad to say, they have gone grossly beyond the boundaries of ethics, morals and decorum as expected to be upheld by elected representatives.

They have failed to realise that the real strength of a political leader lies in his or her character and how they develop it. But instead of focusing their attention on building their character which is a self-management process, they have openly demonstrated to the world at large that they are just in the political game and are hungry for power.

They fail to realise that without the vote of the people, political power is useless as Samy Vellu has learnt. All our politicians have to take a cue from what happened in the US in November last year when Barack Hussein Obama was elected into office as US president. In 1957, when we achieved independence from the British, we did not have racial segregation on our shores.

Whilst in the US the black man was segregated. He was not free and was isolated. Now the people of the US have moved on light years ahead of us by electing Obama into office while we in Malaysia have moved backwards by having segregation of the highest order which is grossly in violation of the articles of our federal constitution. Hence the need to camouflage our means of coexistence with the ‘1Malaysia’ concept which is moribund.

We do recognise that politics will always stay as politics. In any system of parliamentary politics, there will always be the suspicion by one party against the other in respect of party politics and policies, and there will arise the need for the conquest of the power of the state.

As much as our political leaders would want to create new monopolies and privileges whilst having the power to govern, they should be cautious about utilising the political system and the various institutions of the state in concrete ways and not to disrupt the existing social structures and the fabric upon which they have been established.

Only upon this premise would the voting populace appreciate and give their wholehearted support to the government to govern which would ultimately and in the long-run create a genuine and equitable democratic society. We can never create a Utopian state as there will inevitably be pockets of resistance based on our cultural, religious and ethnic diversity.

As much as we have our intellectual independence, we also treasure our freedom above all else as it is our basis of existence. As is often said, man is born to be free. But what we are not able to comprehend is the unnecessary creation of dual or alternatives issues or problems being created within the PAS and the PKR by Hassan Ali and Zulkifli Nordin. As far as the MCA is concerned, most of the voting populace have lost their faith in its leadership.

The enthusiasm for social change on which Hassan Ali and Zulkifli Nordin were elected and their current display of antics gives great cause for concern. We hoped that by voting for change of the status quo, the old ways of playing the game would have eventually faded away.

But these two representatives have clearly demonstrated that not only do they want to do business in the same old way as Umno has done for the last 52 years, but they have gone further by infringing upon the rights of other ethnic groups and have even challenged their own party leadership with impunity.

The antics of Hassan Ali and Zulkifli Nordin appear at first sight to be artificial attempts to gain political mileage by creating alternative issues out of the blue, but their radical phraseology is now tending to alienate and intimidate the supporters of the respective parties they represent.

Anwar Ibrahim and Nik Aziz Nik Mat should not lose time and should create strategies and stress on the need for working in unity and that all the parties’ elected representatives must uphold party policies and no one should ventilate a grievance in public. There should be a culture of unwillingness to directly cross swords with their leaders.

Only then will the Pakatan be able to break the racial boundaries that have been built up by Umno over the past 52 years. The issue is to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues and neither should there be any attempt to preach to the people about the immorality of the counter-cultural ideas of free love. We are old enough as adults to decide what is right and wrong.

Instead of creating ideas which run contrary to the tide of history, PAS, DAP and PKR leaders should help build strong democratic divisional leaders who will utilise their time and struggle to encourage cross-ethnic unity and educate the voting populace on how they intend to use their political base and connections to attain achievable goals which would eventually build a better and more equitable society regardless of race or religion.

In today’s world which is without borders, the idea of the people’s power and solidarity is extremely relevant. Only with such organic connection would political leaders be able to immerse mass popular support for their party’s struggle.

This form of strategy should be clearly centered to demonstrate to the voting masses that their political ideology is to empower the masses which would then be a joint consensus for social change being brought to fruition.