Dear Dr Teng,
Congratulations on making it through the vote of no-confidence that is brought against you as the State Chairman by the EGM movers. The EGM should be viewed with successes for everyone as all the delegates that attend them were very democratic whichever side they cast their preference and this should be applauded too. This shows that democratic process is still very much alive in Party Gerakan although there are attempt to derail them earlier.
The other positive outcome of the EGM is that the delegates gets to engage you after an elapse of 2 years and I am sure they are glad to get a chance to hear from you along with multiple dinner or lunches courtesy of you.
Now that the result is a foregone conclusion, we need to take a step back to reflect on the whole issue so that all of us learnt through this experience while you are tasked with uniting the Party.
There were some points that are noteworthy for your considerations as you put the plan for the future together.
a) New Standards & Expectations
As you recover from the tiring campaigning trail, the expectation of the delegates has just been raised further on you to lead the team up another notch. In short, the performance standard has just been raised again. This means that you will need to double your effort from before just to meet the minimal expectations of the delegates and more than triple the effort to meet the voters aspirations. Hope that you have a chance to give this some deep thoughts on how to manage this while recuperating.
b) Transition Plan
One of the frequent commitments which you have made during the campaigning was that you will work on a transition plan. We sincerely hope that the transition plan will be an inclusive one versus the one prior to EGM where the divide and eliminate style was being used. Although half of the EGM movers were not delegates, they shared the view that was expressed above and we will like to present this to you for your considerations.
c) Unity Plan
This is another common shared view even among both side of the divide. They wanted unity as much as everyone but the challenge is how you are going to make this happen. Unity as explained by us before this, has to be viewed from both angles and that is why it is a WE. (akin to SATU HATI) To unite, a leader requires a good management and organizational skill sets coupled with shrewdness to be able to pull this through. It is not by just words of SATU HATI nor open invite to fill up positions. It is a journey or process to gel and merge the team. If you don’t have the skills, you may want to look around your team or hire consultant to play that role. Anything short of this will definitely be a disaster and it will be worst off than where we are before.
d) High veterans turn out to support you
The analysis of the results shows that majority of your support comes from the veterans group.
While the younger generations wanted to move on with their aspiration and hope, the veterans may not share the same excitement due to their non-connectivity with the younger generations. The point that was missed out while you campaign is that the General Elections 13 (GE13) decision will be made by 2 millions of new voters who will be looking towards someone who could relate to them better. As such, although the battle was won but it will be at the expense of Party Gerakan performance in the GE13.
Your challenge is to turn the support from the veterans that supported you and translate them into activities that you can get them to organize and mobilize the Youth and everyone. I am not sure how difficult this is for you but the observations is that majority of them hardly participate or organize activities after the 308. One good gauge will be the attendance to the SDC record for the last 2 years or the meetings or activities held at their respective branches.
e) Friendly angel sponsors
You may not be aware but you definitely have a friendly angel sponsors that have helped you to campaign the last minute and goodies are being shared with the delegates. This is just like Christmas comes early this year in October. However, on hindsight, such a practice will destroy the Party. I am not sure how you feel about this but if the above information were true, I believed it went against the principle of our Party Ideology that we hold dear in our heart and am sure that you will be keen to investigate whether there is any truth in this and take the appropriate disciplinary actions if it is found true.
f) Positions being offered
Although this maybe a timing issue as you review the list of your current team to fill up some critical positions like coordinators and etc, it could have been avoided and put on hold such discussion during this period of time where it could be easily misconstrued. I am sure the 12 days period will not jeopardize your timeline in filling them up.
The incident that causes the Vice Youth Chief to go to the press could have been avoided if there isn’t any discussion of such positions available by your so called Chief of Staff who has openly campaign for you. As such, it is natural for them to believe in this when it was being brought up. In fact, we should look at this from a more positive limelight that at least the younger generations of these Vice Youth Chiefs are not tempted by positions and will like to see the end of Horse Trading that has make Party Gerakan so subservient. At least we know these are the people that give hope to the voters’ aspirations of wanting a clean leader.
g) Harassing the signatories
We were disappointed with the action that some of the 64 signatories have been called up to withdraw their support although there was an earlier period that allows them to do this before the State Secretary sends out the invitation. Once the invitation is out, whatever attempt can be misconstrued as disrupting the democratic process. This is a form of harassing especially if it is done on individual basis. It will be much better if you could have just organize a get together for all this 64 signatories and talk to them to see whether they are agreeable to the withdrawal and this will show much transparency in managing crisis with sincerity.
h) Promises that were made
As the dust settle from the EGM, I will like to remind you that one of the main reason for the EGM requisition is the failure to deliver on the promises. The clock is fast ticking away and I am hopeful that you have realized this and will be quickly putting a plan together in the next few weeks and share them. It is important to align the whole party on the direction to take.
Dr Teng, I am sympathetic to you on the huge burden that has suddenly landed on your shoulders with the analytical points above while the rest of the Party Gerakan members are looking upon you to see how you will be closing the rank to build a more united party as we emerge from the post EGM era.
I was just wondering whether the thoughts of you losing the motion yesterday will have given you the new breathe of life that allows you to do the things that you wanted so much to enjoy and not being able to spend as much time as before due to the public life demand. Nevertheless, the question will never be answered but you will definitely need to spend more time in reviving and correcting the situations while doubling the effort with time running against you. An analogy will be that you are swimming against the current to reach the waterfall at the beginning point of a river and the river is not the Sungai Pinang but more like Nile River where you are swimming in the murky water after heavy rainfall with strong undercurrent.
Once again congratulations, and the kick-off whistle has been blown the moment that you were garland on 10-10-10.
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