I refer to your report Is Siva eligible to contest in MTUC polls?

What is important for the vast mass of workers in Malaysia is not so much who is going to lead the Malaysian labour movement in the aftermath of the MTUC elections next week, but what kind of qualitative representation is going to be provided.

While much attention is focused on the candidates and the positions that they are vying for, it is not certain whether the MTUC will be able to provide a new and more dynamic leadership to workers.

Although the MTUC is not the sole umbrella labour body in the country, it is however, very often looked to for providing (or not providing) crucial leadership for the country's labour movement.

The leadership notwithstanding, the difficulty in organising trade unions and obtaining the necessary recognition plus the presence of legislation serve to curtail the activities of labour and trade unions.

In particular, the nexus between global capital and the Malaysian state, and employers' hostility to trade unions have also served to curb and constrain the labour movement in general.

While it important to have democratic mechanisms in labour movements to provide for continuity and change, it is not certain that the MTUC leaders - and those who are seriously contending for that power - have seriously articulated the concerns of the Malaysian labour force.

Specifically, these leaders (and those who want to replace them) have addressed fundamental concerns about how to tackle the problems faced by the Malaysian labour movement. Unless there is debate about what has to be done, contests for trade union posts are merely attempts to seek positions and power.

They do not tell about the state of the country's labour movement, the problems they face, and how these problems could be overcome.

The MTUC leadership has often argued in seminars and conferences that globalisation - in other words, the increasing nexus between multinationals and the Malaysian government - has been detrimental to labour not only in Malaysia but in other developing countries.

While this is true, it is about time that the labour leadership develop a more comprehensive understanding of globalisation and how its expansion has resulted in two contradictory developments within the global labour movement.

In many countries, globalisation has resulted in the decline of union density, reduction in the number of unions and a growing perception that the aims of globalisation are quite incompatible with the demands of trade unions.

However, in some countries - particularly South Korea, Brazil, South Africa and the Philippines - globalisation has given rise to increased union density, more confrontations between labour and capital, and increased radicalism on the grounds of certain ideological developments.

So, overall, we do get a picture that globalisation does not automatically lead to the weakening of unions, but rather to a contradictory scenario.

I am not sure whether the MTUC leaders have grasped this fundamental aspect of the labour movement as a source of inspiration to further organise and strengthen the Malaysian labour movement.

Ultimately, it is a question of developing and sustaining a brand of politics that will be in congruence with the aims and objectives of the labour movement. The difficulty with the MTUC and other labour centres - both in the country and outside - is that they have not really developed and sustained a kind of politics that places the welfare and well-being of labour on the centre stage.

In the Gramscian sense, what they have done knowingly - or unknowingly - is to cultivate and nourish a particular political ideology that puts primacy on accommodating the larger aims of the Malaysian capitalist state.

In other words, again in the Gramscian language, the politics of the MTUC is not about 'conflict' but about 'consensus' or consensus disguised in the form of conflict.

Unless and until the MTUC leadership gets out of this present political and ideological entrapment, there is no way it can provide a fresh and dynamic leadership to the country's labour movement.

It is not that the outfit has not done anything.

But piecemeal efforts do not fundamentally alter the circumstances that are generally oppressive to labour and other subaltern groups in the country.

Thus, if MTUC leaders come and go with a particular mindset, how can the labour movement renew itself in a society or world that is quite hostile to it? How is it to confront the increased nexus between global capital and the state, if its politics revolve around the notion of consensus?