Becoming a local politician is a big responsibility.Don;t do it unless you are committed. Local politics do not bring with it the ‘fame’ associated with becoming a national politician. Local politicians are usually people who really want to do something for their local community. In Luton, the pay is ridiculously low. The Council Leader is paid much less than what I can earn from other sources. A councillor without a cabinet post gets even less.
To make sure prospective councillors know what they are getting themselves into, the Council holds two briefing sessions. I attended one on Thursday 22 March. People from the Council’s Local Democray team were there, as well as the Head of Legal Services. They gave a no-nonsense ‘expose’ on what it would be like to be a councillor, which I found very useful.
The main message was, if you cannot fulfil the responsibility, then don’t do it. People vote for you because they want you to serve them. They don’t vote for you to enable you topursue your personal career ambitions. They want you to deliver.
Another message was, you cannot change the world so do not make empty promises. This is something that resonates well with me. As a team, we conciously decided to not make promises. We are very realistic. As candidates, there is not much we can do. But, if elected, we will do our best to address the concerns people have raised. Of course there will things that we cannot do. Many things will be beyond our sphere of influence. We are always clear on that, and we are not afraid to say “I am so sorry but even if you vote for me, we cannot do XYZ”. However, we are also clear that we WILL do better than the current Labour councillors. We have been working hard to help people in the area since last year and we will continue to do so.
While listening to the presentations, I wondered whether similar briefings happen in Malaysia. The Council staff here do not show political bias. Can civil servants in Malaysia be the same?
We canvass almost every weekend since mid-last year. I just got back from canvassing today. I think this is the most interesting bit in our campaign. Canvassing allows me to meet the electorates in my area. I get the chance to find out what their concerns are, and tell people what I believe in. On the main people are very receptive. Many feel disillusioned by politics, and mainly that is because of Labour. Labour promised the world but have not delivered. The repercussion of Labour failures is people saying they have had enough of politics and will not vote.
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