KUALA LUMPUR, May 18 — Pakatan Harapan (PH) must provide voters with a change of political narrative in addition to injecting new blood into their line-up in order to return its appeal to voters in the 15th general election (GE15), a forum panel has said last night.

Speaking to the forum titled "Does Parliament Hold Key Reforms?", former Bersih 2.0 chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said some PH leaders still hold the old mentality of patronage politics, leading them to fail in addressing public concerns and subsequently perform poorly in the recent string of state elections.

Ambiga gave the example of DAP Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang, who had recently announced that he will be retiring from electoral politics.

"Lim Kit Siang is a statesman if there is one. But when he thought its time to leave he left, so we thanked everyone for your contribution until now but you better do something about addressing what the people want.

"I know personally people who don't come out to vote because PH had said the same thing over and over in the elections,” he told about 100 audiences at Sogo Convention Centre.

Meanwhile, Malaysia United Democratic Alliance (Muda) president Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman said his party is currently attempting to galvanise the youth to disrupt traditional political parties and force them to move towards reform.

He said that the parties, even including Opposition ones, had resisted changes which then led the public to stop voting for them as they felt their votes are meaningless.

"We don’t want to change until Umno had changed more than us. Umno had fielded more new fresh faces in the state elections.

"If they don’t want to change, then we battle,” he said, referring to contesting the GE15.

Other panels in the forum were Segambut MP Hannah Yeoh and Chairman of CARI-Asean Research and Advocacy of Asean Business Advisory Council Malaysia, Tan Sri Munir Majid.

The event was held to commemorate a book by former Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Ariff Yusof titled Parliament, Interrupted which was launched earlier this year.

Speaking at the event, Ariff said that the book is neither a memoir about himself nor the Sheraton Move in 2020 which saw him vacate his seat for the appointment of current speaker Tan Sri Azhar Harun.

"The book does not just merely tell the story, but also asked the question of what is wrong with our Parliament what is wrong fundamentally with us,” he said in his keynote speech.

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2022/05/20/pakatan-needs-change-by-bringing-in-new-blood-and-narrative-for-ge15-forum-told/7752