PKR's Burden

I read this article in TMI and almost puked.

PKR wants Pakatan Rakyat (PR) partners to share the burden of contesting in hard-to-win seats in Sarawak during the coming general election to avoid a repeat of the just-concluded state polls.

PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli told reporters today that he will raise the matter during the PR secretariat meeting tomorrow.

He pointed out that PKR had been forced to stretch its resources thin during the April 16 state polls when it contested in a whopping 49 state seats, a move that had likely contributed to its failure to win in more than just three constituencies.

The party, he revealed, had originally only been intent on contesting in 25 seats where it felt its presence was strong but had to field candidates in an additional 24 ‘impossible-to-win seats when neither one of its PR partners were willing to take on the challenge.

“Even SNAP was not willing to reach a compromise and only wanted to field its candidates in the areas where PKR felt it had a chance of scoring.

“We did not have a choice,” he told a press conference to reveal the party’s first analysis of the Sarawak polls.

Do you get it?

There are some seriously flawed people within PKR with a sense of entitlement. Let’s ignore for the moment, that PKR were only willing to give SNAP three seats and also took a few winnable seats away from DAP. However, let’s just look at the fact that they ran in 49 seats – almost double that which they had originally planned for.

This is the problem with the political scene in Malaysia. If you do not have the wherewithal to run so many seats, don’t. If nobody else is willing to pick up the slack, then don’t bother. There is no need to run in seats just for the sake of running in seats, particularly if they are not winnable seats.

You need to pick your battles – in order to win the war.

Run only in the seats where you think you stand a chance, and then pour everything that you have in there. If PKR had chosen to run only in 25 seats, it would have been able to double it’s concentration on each seat and possibly, ensure victory in a few more seats (e.g. Senadin).

However, it had to field candidates all over the place. This makes me wonder on the kind of candidates whom they actually chose to stand on a PKR ticket in an area. It is the same kind of mistake that they made in the last GE, random candidates in random seats.

PKR’s strategists need replacing, and their strategies need re-thinking. Maybe they should sign up for a Blue-Ocean Strategy course. 🙂