Summary

  • R Ramanan acknowledges the heavy responsibility that comes with his victory in securing the PKR vice-president post.

  • He says he will carry it with sincerity, dedication, and full accountability.

One of PKR's new vice-presidents, R Ramanan, labelled his first leadership election triumph as both a personal victory and a heavy responsibility.

Taking to his Facebook page today, Ramanan said his vision and mission are to bring the voice of Malaysia Madani to the national stage, driven by an undiminished reformist spirit.

"This is not merely a personal victory, but a heavy responsibility that I will carry with sincerity, dedication, and full accountability.

"PKR is not just a party, it is our shared home of struggle. Our party, our home," Ramanan (above) said.

Nurul Izzah Anwar officially won the deputy presidency race in the PKR election, defeating incumbent Rafizi Ramli.

Nurul Izzah’s allies Amirudin Shari and Ramanan won the vice-presidency race with 7,955 and 5,895 votes, respectively.

This was followed by Aminuddin Harun (5,889 votes) and Chang Lih Kang (5,757), both of whom are seen as being in Rafizi’s camp. There were 12 candidates vying for the four elected vice-president posts.

Meteoric rise to fame

Last week, Rafizi took a jab at party president Anwar Ibrahim for allowing Ramanan, a former MIC treasurer, to rise through the ranks in fewer than four years after joining PKR.

Former PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli

He said that newcomers should start from the bottom and work their way up by proving their worth and loyalty.

He also urged party members to end the PKR president’s special power to give an exception to any new party member to contest in polls despite not meeting the minimum requirements.

"… Some party outsiders asked how a former MIC treasurer who had resigned only six months prior (could join our party) and in about two years as a member, he was given a safe parliamentary seat to contest.

"Less than a year after that, he gets appointed as a deputy minister. All these happened in fewer than four years after he joined the party," Rafizi said in a ceramah in Johor, in the run-up to the PKR party election.

Rafizi mooted that any newcomer must be a PKR member for at least five years before being allowed to run for any party position. This, he suggested, was to prevent PKR from being infiltrated by outsiders who try to buy their way in using their wealth and influence.

Ramanan’s journey

Ramanan joined PKR in 2020 after leaving MIC.

In the 2022 general election, PKR nominated Ramanan to contest for the Sungai Buloh parliamentary seat, which was held by the then Sungai Buloh PKR division chief R Sivarasa.

BN’s Khairy Jamaluddin lost to R Ramanan in Sungai Buloh in GE15

He managed to defeat former health minister Khairy Jamaluddin from BN and five others, albeit with a greatly diminished majority compared to when Sivarasa won the seat in 2018.

In December 2023, Ramanan was appointed as the deputy entrepreneur development and cooperatives minister.