Media reports have featured the personalities and political ambitions of leaders. The polls have been couched as a test of dynastic politics, a long-standing frame of understanding leadership contestation in DAP from the first major split in 1978.
While important, the lens of personalities misses the bigger picture. Perhaps more than any party polls in recent DAP history, the election is about the soul of the party - what it stands for and for whom.
The results will not just be about who wins positions but how the leadership will position DAP in a context where the party’s national standing for promoting reform, good governance, and inclusion has lost ground. Working with its long-standing political opponent Umno in the Madani government has made an imprint on the DAP ground and among its supporters.
The current intensive competition for party positions reflects differences about...