UKEC as our Representatives

For those who are new to UKEC, it stands for the United Kingdom Executive Council. It is basically made out of all the Malaysian societies in UK universities. Effectively, all Malaysian students who are members of their respective university Malaysian Societies are indirectly involved in UKEC.

We can have a full discussion on the status of UKEC as a representative body, as well as their scope of work, and i welcome any post or comment regarding this, but this discussion is specific to the UKEC AGM which took place on the 27th and 28th of October 2007 in London.

Everything went on as usual the first part of the day, but the second part of the day, when the election started, become more interesting.

The first thing to point out is that when the elections started, no position was contested. Most of the regional chair positions did not even have candidates. There was a proposal to open nominations, but this happened only for the regional chairs. By the time nominations closed, only the Scotland chair had more than 1 candidate (excluding RON). The other positions, including the executive council (EXCO) remained uncontested. The lack of participation by the members (or publicity by the outgoing committee) is worrying.

Hustings then took place. Questions were mild. It started becoming more heated when the executive candidates were up. I will not bother with the specifics. Sufficient to say that the bulk of the questions evolved around the issue of political bias. As it turns out the candidates who ran for the top EXCO positions are still committee members of UMNO.

Due to concern from the floor, there was a motion to effectively compel resignation from their umno (or other political body) post upon winning the ukec election. This would obviously be bad for the candidates, as some of them had publicly refused to resign from their umno position upon winning the election (note I phrase it this way because winning was inevitable result. Malaysians rarely vote RON, and the uncontested candidates were bound to win - you can debate this point if you want)

Several points against the motion were made. I aim to address these points.

Firstly, there was already a check and balance system in place for situations like this. The EXCO is still answerable to the Supreme Council. This may seem right, except it’s extremely ideological. In most cases the supreme council doesn’t not know what’s going on within UKEC, and even if they do, given the geographical situation, it is highly impractical for individual supreme council members to call for an EGM.

Secondly, it was argued that it was discrimination against umno members, or more generally, politically affiliated individuals, as it prohibits them from exercising their freedom to join these parties. I disagree. Firstly, the motion was only for those holding a committee post. Not just random members. The reason for this is to avoid conflict of interest issues. The question of discrimination doesn’t even come in. And even if it does, there was no impediment of freedom of choice. The candidates did have a choice. They just chose to make their political affiliations public, rather than keeping neutral.

Thirdly, that the whole motion was based on hypothetical situations. ‘What if there was a conflict of interest?’. Because of this, there is no point in ‘providing these safeguards’. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the purpose of a constitution? To provide for the ‘what if’s?’ To set out procedures or preventative tools in case of a possibly chaotic situations before it’s too late?

All the above aside, the supreme council members are there not to vote in the best interest of ukec, but rather in the best interest of their individual societies. They are there not in their personal capacity, but rather as representatives of their members. KPUM has engaged in serious discussion in this very forum in the past about political affiliations. We have pledged to maintain full neutrality, as clearly this is an issue that concerns most students. Our members went so far as to demand we declare our sponsors, in event of situations like this, and it’s perfectly understandable. As representatives, we need to maintain a standard of neutrality higher than we impose on ourselves (if that makes sense). (That’s why Hoffman was thrown out from the Pinochet case, as even apparent bias, as opposed to actual bias, is unacceptable). So to have someone who openly hold a post in a political party, and who is committed to stay there, I feel, is offensive to UKEC as a neutral and objective body.

Anyway, the motion was dodged, and was replaced with a lesser motion of appointing independent observers to oversee the decisions and actions of the EXCO. I am in this board, and I will do my best to maintain the integrity of UKEC. But to me, this is not one step forward for mature democracy in UKEC. It is a leap back.