Introduction


When the idea to establish a party was first mooted by its founders in year 1968, Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia’s destiny and mission was already cast on stone. It shall be a party that is people oriented, purpose centric and goal focused.

Saudara-saudari, on this note thirty-five years later, our destiny and mission remains the same albeit with heavier responsibility and greater challenges because our political landscape has changed tremendously. So too has Gerakan, we are now a party of 250,000 members and have grown from a regional party to a national party.

We started as an opposition in Penang but now we are the party providing leadership to the BN government in the state for over the last 34 years and counting. Gerakan is also contributing significantly through our representation in many other state governments and local councils in the country.

If in the past we operated from houses and shop lots, today the head office of Gerakan is majestically housed in a 22 stories building, the Menara PGRM, which will soon be accompanied by its equally magnificent twin tower, the Menara PGRM 2. Similar buildings are in the process of being built in Kedah, Penang and Selangor to exert our presence and accommodate our growth.

In our usual responsibility of providing community service, the party had taken over the Disted-Stamford College and turned it into a non-profit education centre because we want to give more poor but bright children access to education as a mean to a better life. Knowing the value of a life-long education system to an aspirant knowledge economy, we are about to establish an open university to be named the Wawasan Open University, after the brilliant vision of our beloved Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. In addition, Gerakan also supported an education foundation, the Wawasan Education Foundation, to further the cause of education for all.

As a party, we are also known for our openness, curiosity and interest to always seek out ways and means to improve our organisation and members. In our quest to reinvent and revitalize the party, we have set up formal institutions to assist us in areas we want to make greater impact as a political party. In SEDAR Institute, we have a collaborator in reviewing national policies and providing useful recommendations to affect public policy making and implementation. While SATU Academy which will be launched in the coming month of July, is aimed at addressing our members’ personal development and training needs. We believe that sound leadership is the basis of a party’s solid foundation and this quality can be harnessed through proper training and development programmes catering for members and aspiring leaders.

Administration wise, we have recently made history and engraved our name in the Malaysian record book as the first political party being granted the prestigious ISO 9001 accreditation for our membership management system and administration process. This is a concrete evident of our sincerity and seriousness of injecting professionalism into the way our party is being managed. Moreover, many political analysts considered this achievement of ours as a step forward towards party democratization because many other political parties would have loved to maintain these functions as gray areas in order for certain leaders to manipulate the membership process to continue staying in power or to ward off challengers.

However, of all our achievements thus far as a political party, the most significant is our discipline and commitment to keep our organisation free from money politics, “black gold” politics, abuse of public offices and other unhealthy and selfish practices of confrontational politics. This has gained us many compliments and respect from the civil society and the people who have seen us through for the last 35 years. Believe me when I said that Gerakan membership is seen a premium membership in Malaysian politics today. You can walk tall because you are a member of Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia. I salute you for your courage to remain faithful to our party’s mission and ideology, I thank you for being given an honour and trust to lead the best political party in Malaysia.

Saudara-saudari, before I proceed please allow me to wish you a very good morning and a warm welcome to Gerakan’s political dialogue. The purpose of this dialogue is to engage party’s delegates and members from all over the country on our next course of political direction and to seek your consensus on several proposals to be put forth to reinvent Gerakan in the 21st century. This dialogue and reinvention is pertinent, as I have said in the dinner last night, the new era presents itself in multitude of challenges and changes. What we have done best in the past may not work well in the future. Hence, we must continuously reinvent the party in order to stay relevant in the future.

Gerakan: Reinventing for the 21st Century

The reinvention of Gerakan is three pronged. First, we see the need for the party to realign its mission and vision along the objectives of both the Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia. The action is taken after careful examination to study the objectives contained in both Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia which are consistent with our party’s purpose and ideology. Hence, Gerakan reiterates its full support and commitment to assist and work towards the realization of both the Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia.

Next, on the nation building agenda - guided by the nine strategic thrusts laid out in the Vision 2020 – Gerakan aims to help create a just and united Malaysian society based on the principles of universal values of equality, freedom, peace and harmony, liberal and democratic. We envisioned a Malaysian society driven by high moral standards, good spiritual values, innovation, knowledge, fairness, maturity and a sense of national belonging and unity. The society should be lead by a clean, uncorrupted, fair and capable government.

Economically, we will work towards an economically advanced, scientific, service oriented, entrepreneurial, meritrocratic and knowledge based economy where the private sector is the main engine of growth but supported ably by an effective and efficient public sector. The economy is also laid in strong education foundation and system capable of churning out relevant skills to drive the economic activities.

Politically, Gerakan seeks to engage positively with the BN component members and non-governmental organizations interested in the national development agenda. We promise to continue to influence public policies and make constant constructive recommendations to ensure that policies are made for the broader interest of the society. Here, we seek to impress our counterparts in BN with our non-racial approach to promote the interests and needs of the society.

Gerakan also pledges to defend and uphold the rights of all Malaysians as enshrined in the Federal Constitution. We support Malaysia as a secular state, governed by the principles of parliamentary democracy which protects the rights to practice one’s religion, culture, customs and language freely and responsibly. Gerakan is also convinced that Malaysia’s strength is in its ethnic diversity and plurality which made us culturally rich and colourful.

Party Organisation

Saudara-saudari, although the party may have a grand plan on how to better serve and represent the society and nation, our plan will not materialize if we do not make the first step to reorganize and reenergize our party’s organisation so that we are capable of implementing our ideals and programmes.

I was informed by the Secretary-General Saudara Chia Kwang Chye that our reinvention strategy plan is in the process of being polished up and once ready will serve as our blueprint of the 21st century. However, we have outlined five task forces to form our party’s transformation and reinvention project:

1. Reinventing Gerakan Committee

2. Image Branding and Publicity Committee

3. Restructuring Committee

4. Building an Intelligent Party Committee

5. Engagement and Outreach Committee

The role and responsibility of each committee will be addressed in the upcoming blueprint. Meanwhile, I would like to encourage all delegates to use this political dialogue as an opportunity to voice out your views, inputs, comments and feedback to the party leaders and committees assigned to look into the reinvention exercise.

Please let yourself be heard and I assure that every idea and input contributed will go down well as a contribution to strengthen the pillars of Gerakan. With this, I now open the floor for dialogue and discussion.

Thank you.

Read: Report by UTUSAN MALAYSIA: Gerakan is free of money politics THE STAR: Gerakan’s guidebook on intelligent political party