APRIL 7 — It’s not the best time to tell opposition politicians — since one MP is in Police HQ lock-up, another in ICU, and a third literally under house arrest over his home — to quit.

That’s what this column posits today.

Not all of them, not even most of them, just some of them.

Quit meaning not lead the charge or be in charge. They are always welcome ad infinitum — I presume — in their parties as elders, backbenchers, possessor of institutional knowledge and, if those who replace them fail to shine, to be recycled back to the front.

By stepping aside, they’ll bring veracity to the opinion that their party’s vision and hopes for the country are far greater than any one politician. I’m assuming as progressive parties unyielding to the tyranny of permanency, they’d have that opinion.

In summary, ask non-flag bearers to give it a go. Just like a football team, only 11 can start. Why not shed some weight to create space for new talent?

Democratise the challenge to power, how’s that for a novel idea?

Track-records

Let’s get right to it. If the government of the day has been the same for the last 60 years, boasting about their durability, then those who have desisted this government all these years have an identical record, though the converse, that they have been obdurately the opposition. It is 60 years of losing.

To be the losers in crowded races with only one winner ever.

Cruel, considering the oppressive conditions to mount political reform, but in games of power, results always matter more.

Lim Kit Siang was DAP secretary-general in 1969 after winning the Kota Malacca MP seat. He is still MP. While some might suggest that he could go for some type of record for number of years as a parliamentarian, he has spent none of the 40-plus years in federal government. In Malaysia’s winner-takes-all contest held every half decade, it translates poorly.

It is wonderful that in an unprecedented victory — part of a DAP manoeuvre in 2013 to shift strong Johor-born elected leaders thriving elsewhere back to their home state — Lim defeated then-Mentri Besar Abdul Gani Othman in Gelang Patah.

But would it have been equally possible for a younger candidate to snatch victory anyway?

And even if that statement is contentious, open to vigorous debate, what if DAP paid more attention to the persons behind the Johor stratagem? Bold, unexpected and risky, perhaps the ingredients necessary to knock Barisan Nasional off its perch in GE14?

This is not an argument against DAP; this is an argument for DAP — that if they granted the fresher strategists more mandate, the results might even shock the party.

He has the years

As with track record, those before are tempted to abandon reason and resort to experience as an excuse.

Thirty years of being in politics without adequate success is not a basis to shove newcomers off the power map.

If anything, it is an incentive for old hands to learn from the incoming cadres as their peers start to dominate the electoral roll.

Cannot replace experience? But experience must teach us all — as painful as it may be — that we are all replaceable. If that is not a satisfying answer to an opposition politician, how about building so much press on incumbency by the present government, and then going to town with that, while retaining a high level of incumbency in your own party?

Younger voters prefer, if all things are equal, someone they can relate to, rather than those who have great political CVs. Because they will likelier vote those that they like than those with achievements that they cannot identify with.

At this juncture, it is instructive to remind veteran politicians that the tale of a permanent narrative is false. Every Malaysian does not have a standard recollection of the past. They follow stories as and when they come along, with greater weight on the prevailing thinking of their own time.

Which helps explain why those in their 20s wax lyrically about Mahathir Mohamad, and not so much those above 40.

I’m amazed constantly that 60-year-old veterans of eight general elections expect 25-year-olds to be as resentful of the present government. I’m not saying they are wrong, but being right does not grant you votes automatically.

The crunch

Why the noise? Changing the guard effortlessly screams natural renewal and, in politics, that is sexy.

Exactly who should step aside and who gets the chance now is not set in stone. Parties need knowledge; they cannot cast aside everything from the past. It is always about a mix, but I am demanding a mix that leans to younger, capable people without the established order arguing for the status quo and their way to more defeats.

It is time to win. Those who have not won, but neither have lost, may operate without the baggage of the past, of being perennial runners-up. That is what is seen in the actions of the PAS fold. Leaders who feel they will never be in federal power, but are relaxed to the idea that they have to decide what kind of opposition politician they can be, yet, at the same time, able to determine the pecking order within the opposition fulcrum.

It is time to win. Unlike their predecessors, they have less baggage — or history — because they were not in the spotlight before. New comes without stains.  

It is time to win. The young, with more years lived in this century rather than the last, may be less beholden to history as the only determiner of present-day outcomes. They get bolder when they get to elect their own.

It is time to win. My party’s secretary-general will be released, the Amanah deputy-president shall return home to his home, and perhaps, house prices will be justified in the court of public opinion. When the dust settles, it is about a general election. It’s time to get winners to win.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.