THE moment when Rafizi announced his candidacy for the PKR deputy president’s post, the knives were out in droves with the objective of derailing his campaign.

Various accusations were leveled against him including him supposedly abandoning the party and taking a break for the past two years.

Did any of those who accuse him do anything to shore up the party in his absence?

The answer is clear for all to see. The party lurched from crisis to crisis, which started with Mohamed Azmin Ali and Zuraida Kamaruddin deserting the party, taking their factions with them and joining hands with the losers of the last general election to form a new government.

Since then, the party has lost its mojo and direction, hallucinating perpetually about some imaginary friends and numbers.

It took the leadership until June 2021 to fill the posts left vacant by Azmin and Zuraida, and their followers, only in the 2022 congress.

A political party is no different from any other organisation. Everyone is crucial to its function. No one is redundant or inactive. It is not just a numbers game, where the more the merrier.

Every member is required to contribute actively to the party. Every committee member or leader is required to drive the members to carry out the party’s agenda.

These leaders are supposed to be responsible achieving the desired outcomes.

Leaving these posts vacant for more than two years is totally untenable for a party that aspires to govern.

Do PKR’s leaders think that everything is an automated process and things will fall into place when the time comes?

The string of defeats in by- and state elections since February 2020 is already clear proof of the vacuum in PKR’s central leadership.

Moreover, the decision to contest under its own banner instead of Pakatan Harapan was madness.

Yes, PH competed in the general election under the PKR banner and won, but that was because the coalition was not officially registered at the time.

Meanwhile, PH won chiefly due to the widespread discontent of Najib Razak, and not on PKR’s policies and promises.

Thus, for the present leadership to have this belief that competing under its own banner in Johor will evoke a sense of nostalgia or loyalty just goes to show the egocentricity of the existing leadership team.

In that election, it appears that people did not work together and did not work as hard as they did when being actively led.

Not that the voters nitpick the failures of the party or the coalition but the failures were so glaring, yet microscopic to PKR’s leaders.

Obviously, anti Rafizi proponents would point to the increase in membership in 2021, where the party claimed it received 78,000 new applications.

Prior to this, PKR chief organising secretary Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad was quoted as saying that to August 2020, the party had a little more than 1 million registered members.

Apparently, 50% of the party’s members are Malays, Indians made up 25%, with the remainder equally divided between Chinese and the ethnicities of Sabah and Sarawak.

PKR has always projected itself as the only multiracial Malaysian party and a party of choice for voters who feel being Malaysian is more important than being just Malay, Chinese, Indian, or from Sarawak or Sabah.

Rafizi is one of those rare few in the party that possess an appeal that transcends sectarian boundaries in race suffused Malaysia.

Since he came to prominence through the expose of the various scandals committed by the country’s political elite, Rafizi has introduced transformational leadership appropriate to modern teamworking.

Everyone helps each other to advance to a higher level of morale and motivation in achieving the party’s stated objectives.

Rafizi did inspire people, especially those who are apolitical and non-partisan because he communicated a shared vision, highly empathetic and gave his all, as seen from his ordeal in exposing corruption.

His apparent high self-esteem appears to help him to bounce back from these issues fairly quickly.

Those exposes by Rafizi inspired public confidence and gave people hope the country would be in good hands moving forward if PKR and the coalition it led were elected.

People remember good leaders. Bad leaders pretend they are superheroes and end up flying into the pavement from a great height, taking everyone with them.

It is clear that good leaders are those who have made the effort to get to know themselves.

They reflect regularly on what works and what doesn’t and want to know why, not just in the party or the outside world, but within themselves.

They know they have flaws and work to overcome them. That is a booster for their empathy levels, which in turn helps them create great organisations, be it a society, political party or businesses.

If a leader cannot face up to and deal with their own demons, they create a virtuous circle, with their team and for the whole party.

Even if Rafizi wins, he will face an uphill task in playing a supporting role to a leader who has so far refused to deal with his own demon, where the party’s struggles and objectives now mirror that of his own personal obsession rather than for the people and the country.

What options are available for Rafizi if the members voted for his contender during the coming PKR congress?

Form an alliance with like-minded leaders regardless of party and forge a new path for Malaysia 2.0? – May 7, 2022.

* FLK reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.