8th. October was the 14th. "Persidangan Agung Tahunan MUBARAK Malaysia", the ex-wakil rakyats association's annual general meeting, held at the Perdana Hotel, Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Saturday 7th. was the dinner and opening ceremony, 8th. the AGM proper, and 9th. departure. The importance of MUBARAK to the powers-that-be was underlined by the no-show of the Federal Minister from Kelantan who was supposed to officiate. The bias of MUBARAK was shown by the non-invitation of the MB of the state, from PAS. PAS this time around is touted to have reconciled with UMNO, though.
There are 13 states in Malaysia, but Sarawak has yet to join MUBARAK. With 10 delegates from each of the other 12 states, there should be 120 of us. The actual count was 136. That came from the Central Committee making up the absence of several state delegates.
The main event was supposed to be the voting for the Speaker and Deputy Speaker, the President, the Deputy President, and 3 of the 4 Vice Presidents, with the Sabah one pre-nominated. The rest of the Central Committee members are made up of the 12 state Chairmen, selected by each state. The Hon. Secretary, Treasurer and Information Chief are appointed by the President, as are the auditors. All seemed staid. What transpired was the old UMNO dirty tricks, again.
The voting for the present line-up 2 years ago in Kuantan was more robust. The delegates campaigned for their respective candidates for the contested posts, other than that of the President, who won uncontested. In fact, it was agreed that I print the name card for the nominee from NS, our chairman, Yazid, but in Kuantan Chong from Bahau also came with his own cards printed. That Yazid won the Deputy Presidency was because of the apparent extra effort by our delegates from NS. You can say it was Yazid's own vote that won him the Deputy Presidency, because he beat the other opponent by 1 vote !
At our NS preparatory meeting there were misgivings about the Kota Bharu elections. The earlier announcement by Yazid of his intention of contesting for the Presidency had been retracked because of his so-called compromise of going only for the continuition of his Deputy incumbency. Zaharudin, our secretary, said there was talk that the President should let the Deputy's contest be put aside in favour of the incumbent. No such action came.
To be fair, Yazid had worked hard since his election to the Deputy's post in Kuantan. For NS, he managed to get the MB to approve the land in Bahau, and to revise the pension by 100% ! He was also in the midst of the review for the overall pension structure for all 12 states.
But as the two Ismails said, Yazid's style was an issue. There's a certain snobbishness, even when conducting the state meetings. Imagine at the Central Committee, where we have former Federal Ministers and MB's. And Yazid was only a State Exco.
The last-minute withdrawl of Abu Hassan Omar from Selangor also suggested some power play.
In the end Yazid lost soundly - 48 to 84, in fact. That's huge by these types of elections. I heard Yazid wanted to convene a Negeri meeting that same night, but Sainy managed to get him to postpone it to some later date, back in Negeri.
By contrast, the clearly inept Chairman got reelected, in spite of the bungles he made in front of everybody.
I took exception also, to this bungling Chairman. I had personally handed him my written request to speak after the lunch break. While some states had already had multiple speakers, Negeri, although scheduled for the morning session, had not been called. And here was the Chairman calling for the next agenda. It took Yusof Misai to grab the floor microphone and loudly demanded Negeri speaks. And that was how I got the mike from the Chair.
All the previous speakers had spoken off the cuff, including the President. Yazid, too, spoke without notes towards the end of the afternoon session, as the outgoing Deputy, and he spoke well enough.
I didn't want to grope around when speaking, and the subject matter entrusted by Negeri was "pension", something everyone was interested in right from the inception of MUBARAK. When I was serving back in 1995 - 1999, I always spoke from my notes. The rumbling speeches before me carried their points, but I wanted to make myself crystal clear and emphatic. I had spent several days writing and rewriting my 3-page notes, and had read them over several times, loudly, in practice. There's this Malaysian style of speaking when the address at the beginning sometimes takes a big chunk of the time. And there's always the repetitions and the loose direction, all time badly spent and all distracting. Speaking from notes is less glamourous, but there's no missing of points.
The notes distributed to the delegates included one on the issue of the pension, from Selangor. I thought the writer was verbose, and trying hard to be legalese , the grammar lethargic. I wanted mine to be street-sharp and curt. I wanted to emphasise justice and fairness, reason and deserved reward. And there was no need for long, vague sentences, with repetetive and bombastic words.
I took all of 7 minutes.
As I walked past the Central Committee's dias, the President said "great..... !" something, and I turned, and both he and the Secretary stood up and reached for my notes as I handed them towards the President. The Sabahan Vice President later said to me "very clear speech." One of the Melaka delegates said "you did your homework." There were also a couple of congratulations from the other delegates. So I guess I had achieved what I wanted my speech to convey.
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