The Star
19 February 2008

Women’s right activist ready for the challenge

Time to make some changes: The essence of Zaitun’s campaign is politics is for everyone.

Activist Zaitun Kassim is all geared up to stand as an independent candidate, but is still negotiating for the “right” seat with opposition parties to avoid a three-cornered fight. “We started preparing and amassing pledges of support in the last few months, so we can start campaigning at any time,” said Zaitun, 41, who will represent women’s groups on their gender-based platform called Women’s Candidacy Initiative 2 (WCI2). This will be Zaitun's second general election. In 1999, she ran as a women's groups candidate on a DAP ticket against MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy for the Selayang parliamentary seat.

She lost by 8,835 votes (garnering 26,144 votes against Chan’s 34,979.) The women’s groups decided to sit out the 2004 polls and focus on other avenues in their fight for women’s rights.

“We realise that this time we can’t just sit and watch the elections go by with the excuse that politics is for politicians.

“Sometimes, to make a change or even drive home a point, you need to stand up and take part in the electoral process.

“That is the essence of our campaign – politics is for everyone. If you want to make changes, you need to get involved,” said Zaitun, a member of Sisters in Islam, Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) and Amnesty International Malaysia. For this election, Zaitun confirmed that she would not be running on a DAP ticket due to the party's condition that independent candidates must join the party before running under its banner.

“If you run as an independent candidate, you can only get a logo on nomination day, which will not give you time to prepare and build an identity for the campaign. That was why we ran on a DAP ticket in 1999.

“We could have run on the Barisan Nasional platform but unfortunately we did not.

“We do not share a common platform on various issues,” she said, adding that she would also consider running on a Parti Keadilan Rakyat ticket.