TO those who are passionate about international solidarity, human rights, and community service in Klang, you are entitled to be disappointed and frustrated at the manner in which Charles Santiago was dropped from DAP’s candidate list for the general election.

After all, the secretary-general and DAP Selangor chief’s justification for doing so does not appear to be convincing, especially when a handful of MPs in DAP have contested more than three terms.

The decision to drop the Klang MP is even more confounding when he still retains strong community and grassroots support, and many communities from Klang have criticised the decision.

Santiago is merely one of the many that were dropped against their wishes.

In this election alone, we have also seen former MPs, who may be popular among the public – such as Maria Chin Abdullah and Chan Ming Kai – also left off the list.

Again, PKR’s justifications do not cut it – Maria was dropped because of the need for a “highly-educated Chinese who had the energy to move around and handle civil society groups”.

Voters should rightly ask PKR why the question of ethnicity should matter in highly urbanised and diverse seats such as Petaling Jaya and, most importantly, the former Bersih chairman is perhaps the best candidate to handle these groups.

While I am not a fan of BN Selangor chief Noh Omar, I do sympathise with him in some ways, he has been discarded like a dirty cloth.

Both Noh and Santiago were dropped for the same reason: their selection as MP would either be a threat or serve no value to their respective party or the leader.

In Noh’s case, it is patently obvious that Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is dropping those from the “minister cluster” – such as the likes of Shahidan Kassim, Annuar Musa and Noh – as a punishment for previously defying the leader’s wish to have a snap general election.

While the success of the vaccination programme has somehow strengthened Khairy Jamaluddin’s position as one of the very few men of government within Umno, he is not protected by the party or Zahid and has been handed a difficult task to win in Sungai Buloh.

However, the public should equally have a say on the candidates’ selection because the public could only vote on those on the nomination list.

Equally, there is no political avenue or a democracy deficiency for the general public to raise their concerns about popular candidates being sacrificed because of potential party factionalism.

This is why on nomination day when there is bound to be disappointment over dropped candidates, it might be time for Malaysians to think about the idea of participating in the selection of legislature candidates.

If parliamentary democracy means that those representing their constituents must be elected, it is only right that those vying to represent the public should go through a similar process of selections.

Though Malaysia and the UK share a similar political system, the Labour Party in the UK has rules and regulations to govern the selection of its candidates.

Any prospective candidate is to be screened and scrutinised by the party’s rank and file to ensure that the values espoused by the candidate are aligned with the party.

There is also an opportunity for the Labour central committee to propose a list of candidates, but it was certainly not a fait accompli and local grassroots members are equally given power to veto or express their disagreements.

Most importantly, there are also reselection and deselection rules by party members in the Labour party that existing MPs must go through in order to be reselected as a candidate.

While the system is not perfect, it is certainly an upgrade from what we are currently seeing.

There is also another added value to allow more people to decide on the potential candidates: the power of the party president or central committee would be severely diminished, and MPs may be more independent to represent their constituents.

If Santiago were to be retained by the DAP’s rank and file in Klang as a candidate, he would be less likely to be sacrificed by the DAP establishment and at the same time more likely to place the interests of people before the party.

This may give rise to a different set of problems where MPs would tend to be rebellious and may destabilise a political party to the point that the UK government is now having its third prime minister in three years.

However, it is also undoubtedly clear that popular incumbents will continue to be dropped if the status quo persists in Malaysia.

It is about time we think of how we should select candidates before the talk of a general election. – November 6, 2022.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.

* 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.