As it is, the DAP with its new rules about party members following diktats from the central command is sliding further away from what people believe DAP is supposed to offer in this theocratic-leaning political landscape.

Malaysians, regardless of their ethnicity or religious backgrounds, gravitated to the DAP because they knew that wanting a just and equitable Malaysia did not mean embracing the establishment social contract but rather it meant committing to principles that would ensure a just and fair Malaysia to all regardless of ethnicity and religious background.

“That is the way to go. I mean, before the decision is made, you can argue, put up your case and lobby, but the moment the decision is made, you are a party man, you have to respect the decision,” said Loke, but let's get real for a moment.

This may work for the ride-or-die supporters but the reality is that the “party” does not make the decisions, and never has.

Rather a group of political operatives using whatever reasons they come up with, normally self-serving, make those decisions and then dress it up as a party decision.

People like Charles know this but they don’t say anything because they believe and hope that internal party politics no matter how sordid or dirty, should be sublimated for the greater good, no matter how small the steps taken towards the bigger more equitable picture.

Faction with the most influence

Here’s the thing, as long as the political operative was doing the people’s work, then we could forget about how sordid the party politics was and concentrate on the bigger picture.

And let us be honest, under the party-not-the-man horse manure, supporters have managed to overlook and whitewash many troubling issues that have cropped up in the DAP over the decades, but it was the people like Charles and many other political operatives from other parties, who managed to convince the rakyat that if they just carried on for a little while longer, for the next election, that things would get better and all that party nonsense was forgotten and sometimes even bad policy was introduced.

The DAP, for some odd reasons, are losing party men and women, who have shown a strong streak of individualism and bucking the groupthink, and all of them cannot be pigeonholed.

Tony Pua for instance is the kind of political operative who did things I agreed with and other things that disagreed with. And this is exactly the kind of political operatives the DAP needs.

Charles is like that too. He gets my vote, like Pua and some of the others, because they demonstrate that they are willing to say and do things that get their party in trouble because they believe in the principle of the matter.

The same goes for someone like Ronnie Liu, who by the way, Pua had harsh words for.

But together they represented – factionalism and all – a dialectic that any successful party needs.

And this is what is so frustrating about this debacle. The new party man, V Ganabatirau, because of the manner in which the boys from central command behaved is defined not as an independent-minded candidate but rather as someone who is favoured by the faction with the most influence in the DAP.

The power brokers in any political party will always claim that a booted candidate is losing support because they know that people very often vote for the party and not the man.

It takes a very intelligent voting polity to reject this idea and unfortunately because of partisan politics, this rarely gets done.

Maybe it is a good thing that Charles and some of the others are out of the picture because what we have learnt if we are paying attention is that partymen eventually become Yesmen.