Is Gerakan playing the political patronage game?

A senior lawyer posed me a question in court this morning: is your party President doing a good job? I did not answer him precisely although we talked and laughed over a cup of teh-tarik. So is the party actually relevant to the public? Of course, with our representatives in the government and Penang’s comrades activism, our voices are heard. One may asks why only in Penang? This is a separate issue of which I have discussed it in my previous postings.

Looking at a different angle, the reason why Gerakan still has a role to play in our political system today is the very fact of the incentives given to the party activists and elites, in exchange for party loyalty. As a result party patronage may helps Gerakan to develop clientelistic networks as a means of maintaining electoral support. This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Many political parties around the world have used this strategy. As Gerakan become more entwined within the system and coalition, and as we have lost our traditional grounding in Penang, patronage can become a key resource in anchoring the party presence within the political system and in controlling flow of communication. Through patronage, and through the appointment of party members/leaders to key ministries and institutions, Gerakan can hope to gain an oversight of the likely demands posed to the political leaders, as well as of the likely policies that are needed to meet these demands. Patronage in this sense might compensate for otherwise decaying party networks or relevance.

Ultimately Gerakan must constantly examine the party’s ability and people’s (voters) mentality towards BN over time, and the extent to which party patronage is exercised as a privilege or we shared it proportionately across the spectrum of other component parties. In short we have to access the strength and impact of party patronage across time and space, after all it is nothing illegitimate about it.