Friday, June 20, 2008

A mockery for PR if partisan nominees appointed as councilors under NGO quota

It has been negotiated that there will be an average of 6 non-partisan councillors in each local council in Selangor excluding Orang Besar Kaya Besar Daerah (OKBD). In Selangor, there are altogether nine OKBDs in each local councils except for Petaling Jaya City Hall (MBPJ), Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) and Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ).

In Petaling Jaya City Hall, there will be a total of 24 new councilors of which four of them are from PAS, seven from PKR and six from DAP, with the remaining seven councilorship to be appointed from non-partisan nominees, i.e. NGOs and RAs in Petaling Jaya.

The Star Metro has published a list of councilors for MBPJ today and I was requested to comment on it. For a city with various active NGOs in town, political parties should not hijack councillorship reserved for NGOs and RAs in MBPJ.

Sad to say, from the list of unconfirmed names reported in the Star Metro today, I can notice that there are efforts by certain party to insert party members as councilors in MBPJ under NGO quota as there are only six NGO and RA councilors in the list, namely Richard Yeoh (TI), Anthony Thanasayagan (Coordinator of Malaysians Against Discrimination of the Disabled), Dr Melasutra bt Md Dali (Town Planner), Cynthia Manonmani a/p Michael Gabriel (Suaram), Derek Fernandez (prominent lawyer on local governance) and Paneer Sivam (labourer activitist) with no representatives from residents association.

It is my stand that the seven non-partisan nominees should be purely reserved for non-partisan nominees, i.e. NGOs and RAs in Petaling Jaya. Else it will be a mockery for Pakatan Rakyat.

4 comments:

Bentoh said...

Errmmm... Can I ask how the name list was leaked out at the first place?

and is it confirmed yet the (non-partisan) MBPJ councillors will only be 6?

We are not sure though... because the name list is not out for don't-know-what-reason...

It's already more than 100 days since the ex-councillors resigned... and we only got to know that there'll be such percentage of this and that... but the list? nothing...

Good job Pakatan Rakyat... Good jon DAP... Good job the DAP exco who is suppose to supervise the local government portfolio... and good job the Menteri Besar...~~

LAU WENG SAN said...

Dear Kok Ben,

According to what was told to me, the list is exactly the same as the list published in the star metro yesterday.

It was confirmed that there will be seven councillors to be appointed from NGOs, RAs etc. Of course, it is not the case right now.

Anyway, i believe the full list is already available. I am not sure where you stay. If you outside PJ, you can probably consult your local ADUN.

Bentoh said...

Hi YB Lau,

Thank you for your response... :)

Unfortunately the Star Metro did not tell us who are the two "unconfirmed one"...

You mentioned one of them, Paneer Sivam, as one of the non-partisan candidates... which makes Chan Chee Keong the social activist suspicious...

Oh by the way... the "officially" DAPs in the list are 5 instead of 6...

So confusing... ;)

LAU WENG SAN said...

Dear Kok Ben,
It isn't confusing. There are six DAP members in the council. Ramakrishnan is our member, he is a lecturer in a private college.