Between “real politics” and “citizen politics”

Occasionally, I was asked this question: Why don’t you join politics? Are you with any party? Why you blog about social-political issues? If you’re soooo concern, join politik lah and etc.

Yesterday, I reckoned I’ve found the best answer, when The Sun’s Zainon Ahmad and Maria J. Dass talked to the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) president and former Parti Keadilan Rakyat deputy president Dr Chandra Muzaffar.

You also have an increasingly vocal middle class, they are the ones who attend Aliran functions and the functions of other NGOs and the middle class was just beginning to assert their independence, think for themselves – the power to be part of politics. This is what I call citizens politics. It is different from party politics – you don’t have to be a member of a political party to stand for elections. As citizens they have a right to be concerned with what’s happening to the country and this is what we were doing.

So citizens politics was beginning to grow and develop and people were becoming more and more concerned about issues and speaking up. [...]

We’ve always known that in politics you are more concerned with power than anything else, but I think you have to get into the ring to see what it really means – this obsession with power. It’s actually the major preoccupation of politicians, it’s not the ideals which they spout from time to time … their real obsession is power, and I thinks it is very difficult to hold down certain principals in party politics. You have to compromise all the while, you have to adjust to various situations and you have to be very, very partisan in your outlook…but sometimes by becoming overly partisan you become unjust to the realities, the truth as you see it.

Now you know.