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How primaries can empower local democracy
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COMMENT | The relatively poor turnout for Pakatan Harapan’s big rally over the weekend got me thinking about another point that Dr Wong Chin Huat recently raised in his articles about what we can learn from German democracy.

“It is worth mentioning that Germany’s Party Law stipulates that parties must select their candidates at the state and branch conventions with secret ballots, which gives state and local leaders – instead of national leaders – the real power in picking candidates.”

This runs in stark contrast to Malaysia, wherein the president of a political party has the ultimate say over who represents the party in every single seat - federal or state - in the country.

This is because said party president’s signature is required on the form that a candidate must submit to the election officials on nomination day if he or she wishes to contest using that party’s logo.

Thus, regardless of which individual the members of a local branch might prefer to run as a candidate, the party president is fully able to ignore any and all input in favour of the candidate he or she prefers.

We sometimes overlook the significance of this feature in Malaysian politics...

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