Today, it handed over a manifesto, known as the Malaysian Minorities National Agenda (Minda@2040), to Pakatan Harapan vice-president M Kulasegaran.
NewGen president A Rajaretinam hoped Pakatan Harapan (PH) will give Minda 2040 serious attention.
He said it was drawn up after much brainstorming and discussions with NGOs and civil society members.
“A lot of these recommendations were made by grassroots leaders who spent hours discussing how best to help the minorities,” Rajaretinam said after the national dialogue on minorities here today.
“The manifesto contains the demands, aspirations and game plan for minorities for the next 20 years.”
Rajaretinam hoped these recommendations would be absorbed into the PH’s manifesto, which is currently still being drawn up.
The manifesto covers ways to curb socio-economic issues of the minorities and how to reduce the cost of living. It also covers socio-political, education and health care insurance issues.
Rajaretinam said the manifesto was unlike the Malaysian Indian Blueprint (MIB) announced by the BN government.
He said MIB is “purely an election gimmick” to get the votes of Indians in the 14th general election (GE14).
NewGen, Rajaretinam said, will not be vying for any seats in GE14 and will instead concentrate efforts on backing the opposition coalition.
“We are mostly from NGOs and civil societies. We are not really interested in seats,” he said.
The party, on Sept 28, submitted its formal application to be the fifth partner in PH, which now consists of DAP, PKR, Amanah and PPBM.
“We represent the ethnic minorities as a whole. We hope the PH presidential council, which will meet on Oct 2, will discuss our application and accept us into the pact.”
The party currently has 2,000 members, comprising mostly community and youth-based NGOs, but Rajaretinam hoped to rope in 100,000 members in the next few months through an aggressive membership drive.
NewGen deputy chairman Francis Rajah said the party is organising talks in November in five constituencies where BN won with narrow majorities in the last general election.
These are Sungai Petani, Teluk Intan, Kuala Selangor, Bentong and Tebrau.
“We are concentrating where there is a 15% population of Indians. We will explain to the people why they need to vote for PH in the next election.”