Speech by M.Kula Segaran at the thanks giving dinner held by the Kg. Bintang at Belam Estate, Ayer Tawar at 8pm on Thursday, 16^thSeptember 2010:

Call for the review of Perak DAP's practice of fielding one candidate in two seats

Tonight's thanks giving dinner is held with two main purposes, firstly to celebrate the branch's success in organizing the recent dinner and secondly to celebrate he people's success in forcing the Government to cancel the intended compulsory acquisition of the Indian Heritage land in Sitiawan.

August 25, 2010 is certainly a day of pride for local Indian community and the DAP as even though the BN could "seize" Perak state power, they could not seize the Heritage land.

Today is the first time when Malaysia Day has been declared a public holiday. This public holiday should have been declared in 1963 when Sabah and Sarawak joined us to form Malaysia.

If it was not because of the 2008 general election results which dealt BN its worst electoral debacle, Malaysia Day would never be declared a public holiday by the BN government.

This shows the power of people's votes and what changes the people's votes can bring about.

Presently there are over 4 million unregistered voters in the nation and about 900,000 are Perakians. These unregistered voters will be significant factor in the electoral outcome if they can vote in the next election.

Automatically registration of voters will be the ideal and practical solution to solve the problem of such high number of unregistered voters but the BN government is afraid of the young voters and therefore will not support such a long standing DAP's proposal.

Hence, it is imperative that DAP branches must double or even treble our efforts to register new voters to ensure that our twin objectives of capturing Perak state and Federal power in the next general election can succeed.

Undoubtedly, next general election is going to be the most important election in the nation's electoral history. It is also going to be the dirtiest one as BN will certainly employ dirty tactics to try to keep in power.

To regain Perak state power and to capture Federal power will not be easy tasks and require better and thorough preparation from the Pakatan Rakyat, whether in terms of publicity work, policy formulation, people mobilization etc.

One important area that Pakatan Rakyat must give importance to is putting up the most winnable candidates in every seat.

Hence, we will have to do a thorough study on the present performance of our elected representatives.

We need to weed out the inefficient and the opportunists. We need to identify new people.

In terms of strategy, the Perak DAP's practice of fielding one candidate in two seats, that is, the state and parliamentary seats has to be reviewed.

Even holding and serving a single seat is already a mammoth task. What more if a person holds two elected posts?

More importantly, Perak DAP does not lack capable, dedicated and honest members who are winnable candidate materials.

By ceasing the practice of fielding one candidate in tow seats, we can also allow these deserving candidates the chance to serve the Party and the people in the forefront.

I therefore call for the review of the Perak DAP's practice of fielding one candidate in two seats.

* M. Kula Segaran, DAP National Vice Chairman & MP for Ipoh Barat