It’s been a busy start to the new year. We are continuing our research policy work and will publish our new paper this coming Tuesday on Party Finances. If political parties are not transparent about how much they need for operations and elections, how can they even be transparent about how they raise the required money. Even under the current political regime, our paper will show that there is a difficult but ultimately viable option to fund political parties legally. So stay tune for our policy paper release on Tuesday next week.
On community front, I was at 2 CNY events yesterday and will be attending another 2 today. Next weekend there are another 6 CNY events lined up.
On one of the events yesterday, an uncle ask me why have I been so quiet lately in the news. That is partially true. I give regular comments on news, mostly in FMT and Malay Mail. That is simply because their reporters approach me for comments and I am happy to oblige them. But it is also true that I don’t call for press conferences to specifically highlight issues. Hence the perception of being media shy.
This is partly due to the fact that as I evolve as an MP, a big dose of cynicism has set in. Can we ever get things done in Parliament? When we attack on 1MDB, the government clams up and the people moves on from disgust to acceptance; it breaks your heart.
So sometime in mid 2016, I decided to change my political goals. I will continue to speak out but I need to cut down the work of reacting to scandals after scandals.
I decided that the Kelana Jaya office must bring back some focus on research and fundamental policy making. I decided that I should also invest more time and attention to train my interns and staff. As my first term draws to an end, it is now more urgent than ever to impart critical thinking and policy making skills to the next generation, the future leaders. In short, I decided to be a teacher and less of a politician. That is why instead of press conferences we now run our Monday Night Chat program. We also want to publish more papers.