Sivaranjani Manickam has been elected the new Secretary-General of Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) at its 26^th National Congress, which took place at the end of July. Sivaranjani, who was formerly the Workers Bureau coordinator of the party, takes the reins from Sivarajan Arumuagam, who was the Secretary-General for nine years. She has been an activist for more than 20 years, been a member of PSM for almost as long, and has also worked for UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees]. She is currently Associate Director of Operations at Asylum Access, an NGO working on refugee issues.

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Dashran Yohan: First of all, congratulations on getting elected as the new Secretary-General of PSM. How are you feeling?

Sivaranjani Manickam: I feel very burdened. It’s a huge responsibility. There’s a lot of responsibility, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and I’m still learning. We keep learning, even in this position. I’m excited to learn more.

Dashran: When did your journey in activism begin, and what made you want to become an activist?

Sivaranjani: Actually, I started as a student activist when I was in UKM [Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia - National University of Malaysia]. I was involved in a student group called Jawatankuasa Solidariti Mahasiswa - JKSM, I recall. That’s where my exposure to activism started, where we did free education and also went to the estates nearby to get involved with the community and learn their day-to-day issues. We conducted free classes for the children in the estate and organised the youths in the estate. That was my first introduction to activism.

After finishing my studies, I was wondering how to continue this journey. There was an organisation, an NGO called CDC [Community Development Centre]. They were leading a movement called Jerit [Jaringan Rakyat Tertindas - Network of the Oppressed People]. I attached myself to that organisation and started to get involved in the movement. Jerit was my first involvement in the movement. I was very interested in workers’ issues, even from day one when I started to get involved after university. From there I slowly moved to PSM’s political platform.

I started my activism in 2002 when I was in UKM. It’s been more than 20 years already - 22 years right now.

Dashran: I’m very curious about UKM specifically, and that club, that society that you were in, which is JKSM. What was unique about it? I realised that a lot of activists come from UKM, from that particular society - PSM people like Arutchelvan, Nalini, and others. What was that experience like? What was special about that society?

Sivaranjani: The society existed in UKM university, but we didn’t do anything in the university. Our work was mostly engaged with the community outside of the university. There was a tagline: dari masyarakat kita datang, kepada masyarakat kita kembali [from the community we come, to the community we return]. What that means is you are coming from the community to study here, but even while you are studying, you cannot disconnect yourself from the community and the issues that are happening. That can take you to the next level. Education comes not only from the books themselves - you also learn practical things on the ground, and that makes you a good student, thinking wiser.

That kind of exposure this group could give us - they could connect us from the book and also the practical things together. I think that is something very unique, which we couldn’t find in other organisations that already existed. Usually, if you see any club or association that exists in university, either they will just gather the undergraduate students and then they just do activities within the campus, or maybe they will select a once-a-year programme to go outside and do one welfare programme in the community, and then come back.

But JKSM didn’t work that way. They had regular activities:

– My weekly activity was to go and teach
– If there were any issues that came up from the community, estate communities, then we needed to come back and talk about it in our team meetings
– Every semester break, we would select one estate - usually we would select somewhere reachable because we wanted to do the work continuously

We wanted to engage and do the work consistently. We didn’t want to go somewhere like in Pahang [a Malaysian state] and then come back and not know what was happening there afterwards, not doing anything. If there’s no follow-up, there’s no constant work being done there. So we consciously selected reachable places nearby to us, and then we would go there, stay there, learn from the masyarakat [community], and then go back again.

Dashran: Going back before your university days, what was your childhood like? Where did you grow up? What was life like in school? I’m wondering, around the dinner table when you were sitting with your family, did you discuss activism and politics?

Sivaranjani: You asked about my childhood - I wasn’t a rebel, but I can hear stories from my other comrades who were really like that, who had these fighting elements even when they were in childhood. But I wasn’t from that kind of background. I was from a normal B40 [bottom 40% income group] family background. My mother used to tell me I was very talkative when I was young, and I liked to argue, but I don’t think I was arguing about progressive things - just normal things, normal fighting.

But there’s one thing that made me very brave since young - maybe because of my father. My father used to tell me that women must be very brave, they must be very independent, you must not depend on men. Basically, that was my childhood.

Later, now if you ask me, after I got involved with progressive politics and PSM, yes, I do have a lot of conversations with my family members. When we gather for any family functions or meetings, there’s always discussion about what’s happening in the country, or how PSM views this.

In the early days when I was in university, my father wasn’t very happy when I got involved in politics. My father used to ask me: “You are studying, you should look into your future, getting a good job, and how to uplift your life.” Since we are from a B40 family background, the aim of education is to increase your wealth - there’s nothing else in their mind. So this was a very big conversation in the early days.

But later, when they saw I was very consistent in what I was saying and what I was doing, it was also a kind of message to the family that this person is very determined in what she’s doing. So let’s listen to her. They started to trust, they started to see the work. There were lots of small victories when I posted on my social media, when I talked about issues with my family members. It was eye-opening for them, and the trust was there. They saw the victories and they follow me on my social media.

Now I would say they have very high respect for what PSM is doing. Even family members call and ask: “This is happening, how can you help us? What’s your view?” So it has changed that narrative over the years.

Dashran: Speaking of PSM, why did you join PSM, which is a political party, a socialist political party? A lot of people who get into activism don’t necessarily join a political party. They might be with an NGO throughout their activism journey, they might be independent activists, and so on. Why did you join a political party, and why that political party - PSM?

Sivaranjani: I think it’s a process. I wasn’t aiming to join PSM, but it happened slowly when you get exposed to the issues. When I started in JKSM, when I went to the movement Jerit, and when I worked in the grass roots coalition Marhain, you start to question a lot: Why are these injustices happening in the system? Why are these systemic issues happening? How do we change it? Do we think a reform agenda works within this politics?

If it doesn’t work, and all the political parties who are campaigning reform ideas - how can I fit into those political parties? Because that’s not going to give me an answer for all the issues that I’m fighting on the ground. So where can I align myself politically to fight? The only option in Malaysia, for whoever sees injustices happening on the ground - if you don’t want to repair things, you want to really overhaul things, change the system - which political party is doing that work? Only PSM. I had no choice other than joining PSM, in 2006 or 2007.

Dashran: For the past few years in PSM, you were the national Workers Bureau coordinator. Tell me about some of the work that you did there, some of the highlights when you were in this role.

Sivaranjani: I could remember three campaigns that I was heavily involved in.

The Minimum Wage Campaign

The first is the minimum wage campaign. When we started this campaign, I was with the movement called Jerit, and we launched this campaign in 2002. I still remember the launch was done in Kajang [a town in Selangor state], and then we started to do roadshows throughout the country. We were talking about minimum wage, where at the time people didn’t even know what the meaning of minimum wage was, why such a law was needed. You really needed to explain: “There is no law to say what your minimum salary should be. There’s massive exploitation - employers are exploiting you by giving you such low wages. There’s no policy in the country to say this should be your minimum payment, minimum salary.”

We were explaining that to common people, laypeople in the country, workers in the country. I was involved in that roadshow and the constant campaign since 2002 until 2013 when the government announced the minimum wage law. Imagine when we launched the campaign in 2002, it was RM900 [€190] - the amount that we launched. When we got the policy in September 2012, it was RM900. It took that long for this small amount to be fixed as minimum wage. We fought, and that really built me a lot.

My involvement in this campaign, as a person who came from working-class background - my father was a lorry driver, my mother was a factory worker - I saw how this wage suppression really happened in people’s daily lives. My parents were very hardworking, but they remained poor. When hardworking people remain poor, this is such a serious problem. There’s a wage gap in this country, which is the biggest problem. Where do you draw the line? We didn’t even have a law in this country. When we fought for that minimum wage, that brought a lot of awareness.

Employment Insurance Scheme

The second campaign - many workers don’t even know at this point in time that there’s an Employment Insurance Scheme existing. It’s called EIS, and in Malay it’s called Skim Insurans Pekerjaan [Employment Insurance Scheme]. We were discussing this issue way before, but as a campaign formally, we started in 2015. This is for workers who lose their jobs suddenly. Every ten years or so, there’s an economic crisis happening, businesses are closing down and shutting down, workers are losing their jobs, and until they find a new job, what protection is available? There was nothing, until we managed to fight for this scheme which became effective from 2018. Now any worker who loses their job can go and get allowances - temporary allowances to make sure they get some kind of support until they can look for other jobs.

Contract Workers Campaign

The third highlight is the campaign we are working on now - contract workers in government buildings. Jaringan Pekerja Kontrak Kerajaan [Network of Government Contract Workers] - JPKK is one of the organisations that we formed, and I’m one of the main coordinators in JPKK. We are running a campaign asking the government to bring back the same system that we used to have, where workers - cleaners and security guards in government buildings - were hired directly by the government before 1984.

Then in 1984 during the time of Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the privatisation policy was announced and introduced. Following that, in 1995, all the services in government buildings - cleaning services and security services - were all privatised to private companies. These private companies get contracts from the government to implement these services.

We are still fighting for this issue, but we have exposed a lot of issues. You see the contract system - the government, who’s supposed to be the safeguard of this country, is itself exploiting workers massively in its premises. Before you tell the private sector corporates to correct themselves, you should also correct your policy on how you exploit these workers. They are B40, they are workers who are on minimum wage. These are the workers who need protection. This is one of the campaigns we are running.

I would say these are some of the highlights, rather than our day-to-day fights on workers’ cases, community issues that we do. We have a lot of victories. Recently, you would have seen during the election, the government announced that houses are going to be built for estate workers....

Dashran: I think people don’t realise you also work with refugees. You work on refugee issues within your capacity as a member of PSM, but you are also with an NGO, Asylum Access, where you are the Associate Director of Operations. Talk to me about the kind of work that you have done with refugees in Malaysia.

Sivaranjani: Refugees are a group of marginalised communities, and my work with refugees didn’t start at Asylum Access. I was working with UNHCR from 2005 for seven years. That’s where I was introduced to these communities and what problems they face in this country, being another group of marginalised communities.

I was exposed to their issues and challenges. Refugees are forced to flee from their countries because of persecution issues:

– Because of being a minority ethnicity
– Issues of nationality
– Being a member of any particular social group in that country fighting for self-determination or other issues

They become a threat to the state, and then there are state operations against them. They are forced to flee the country at the end of the day, and they go to other countries to find protection.

When they come to Malaysia, what are we doing to these communities? That is another level of oppression. They already have a lot of issues in their home countries, and when they come to host countries like Malaysia, what are the challenges they are going through?

You see, Malaysia is not a signatory country to the refugee convention. So Malaysia can easily say: “Sorry, we do not have any obligation to protect refugees.” But being part of the United Nations, you are also bound to some level of responsibility when it comes to international protection. So how the country perceives refugees is the biggest issue.

Working in UNHCR or working in Asylum Access now for more than eight years - the fight is not really different from what we are doing in PSM. I was able to align myself clearly on where I should stand on this issue. When any marginalised communities are being oppressed, their rights being violated, our stand is: how do we want to protect them? How do we want to get their rights?

When you are fighting as a political party to have a better life for the rakyat [people] here, it’s also including the people who live in the country - other communities like migrants and refugees. They should also deserve to have this kind of decent life. How do we create a life not against each other? After all, it’s part of human rights work. I stand for the rights of marginalised communities wherever I am.

Dashran: How has your work with the most marginalised - because you’ve been doing this for more than two decades since your university days, and then later PSM, and you’ve worked with UNHCR and all of it - how has working with low-wage workers, refugees, even the OKU [Orang Kurang Upaya - people with disabilities] community, shaped your political views? What have you learned from the experience?

Sivaranjani: I could easily say that when we work with marginalised communities, we get more and more exposed to the structural problems that exist in our system. There are a lot of problems at the root. The root is the capitalist system that we are talking about, the unequal system. How do you change the system? Only then can you see - because the system, the current system, creates a lot of gaps. It creates a lot of loopholes for people to fall back into poverty and fall back into human crisis.

If you don’t understand this, then you cannot think about your long-term goals. In this country, we can’t keep fighting for a worker who comes with a problem in one factory, campaigning that case, and once the worker gets victory, celebrating - that is not the real victory that we want. Because it could keep repeating, keep coming back again. You need to create an environment where everyone can live, everyone can get their basic needs met, everyone can live without fighting each other.

Can this be done in the current political spectrum, current political structure? If not, then you have to overhaul the system. That’s how I understand it when I work with marginalised communities. I know that when I go and resolve this problem, it is not going to give a permanent solution. It’s going to come back. So I need to prepare the workers or the communities for the long-term fight to change the system, and how to do that. This is where you start to organise people, empowering them, getting them into a movement for bigger change.

Dashran: What do you think are the biggest problems and/or challenges facing Malaysians right now?

Sivaranjani: You can go everywhere now and hear from people: “Everything is expensive. The pay is low. We can’t afford the cost of living.” I think this is the biggest problem that Malaysians are facing now - high inflation and low wages. How do you handle your cost of living on a day-to-day basis? This is the biggest thing that people are grumbling about daily.

The second one is racial politics. Everyone is taking a shortcut, creating racial tensions. There are some people who will be benefiting from that - this is taking away the real issues and making people fight with each other with racial things. Malaysia constantly has this happening - racial politics. This is another issue.

I also see another issue - no strong movement, no people’s movement. If anything happens when the government announces something, when the government comes up with policies that are against people’s aspirations, there should be massive people going to the streets and demanding change. We have seen this kind of scenario in some countries where people’s movements are very strong. They can really show protest against governments who go against people’s aspirations, but that is not something we can see in Malaysia.

What that says is we are still very far away from making bigger changes. People are not part of any big movements. But if tomorrow there’s one racial issue, you can easily gather people.

Dashran: The three things you mentioned are actually the follow-up question I wanted to ask. The problems facing Malaysians right now - you talk about the standard of living, high cost of living and low wages. It’s a common problem that 99% of Malaysians face, unless you are literally in the top 1% or 0.5%. This is probably something you complain about at various levels. If you are in the top 30%, you face it a bit less than the bottom 40%, but it’s a common thing most Malaysians are facing.

That’s not how we seem to arrange ourselves politically. When people think of politics and going to the ballot box to vote, what dominates us is culture wars, racial and religious politics. How do we change this mindset from looking at the world through the prism of race and religion to looking at the world through the prism of class, where economic and political economic analysis is your way of understanding politics? Right now, most people may complain about traffic jams and wages, but they vote based on race and religion. They think about politics based on race and religion.

Sivaranjani: I don’t blame the people for this. What narratives, what alternatives are we giving them to change that thinking? That’s why PSM thinks that during elections, we cannot isolate ourselves. We must go and take part in the political process, in elections, to tell who you are, what your manifesto is, what you are offering, what your economic policies are. This is where we think that when you give alternatives, people can compare.

Of course, it’s not so easy because they have been in this mindset, and our mainstream parties have been doing this for ages - for 50, 60, 70 years. That’s already become very strong in people’s minds. When you want to change it, there is no fast track. We have to do it whether we like it or not.

That’s why we think PSM alone is not able to do that. We need a bloc - we need a strong coalition, progressive coalitions. Parties that give alternative thinking to the people must come together and build that coalition. How do you want to go as a powerful alternative for people to look at you as an alternative to race and religion politics, so they can see that class politics can be an option for them? But you must also be in the position to give that option to the people.

I think that’s a role that PSM needs to play, and it’s quite crucial. Not only PSM - we need to really identify our progressive partners, how we can come together to change this narrative. Election is one platform.

Our day-to-day fight - of course, we do not have mainstream tools. TV does not belong to us. National radio does not belong to us to give our point of view, because it is always controlled by the state and they give their narratives. We need to come up with alternative mediums so people can receive our voices, our policies. That’s also a big challenge for us. We don’t own any of these means. Within our restrictions, within the small resources, we have to think to do things effectively.

One platform that most working class are on now is TikTok. How are you going to create content on TikTok? Three minutes, four minutes - people scroll very fast. You have to be creative creating the content for them to get the message in two minutes. It’s very challenging because we don’t give them handouts or cash handouts or anything for people to listen to you for five minutes. These kinds of challenges exist for the left in these countries to become an alternative for the people.

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Dashran: You are now the new Secretary-General of PSM. I’m wondering what your goals and priorities are. I ask this also because I’ve spoken to some other members of PSM as well, and they talk to me about how difficult it is to really break through that mindset of race and religion. In fact, they have shared stories about how PSM goes on the ground. Sometimes you will sit in front of bulldozers to prevent houses from being demolished and all of that, and the community that you help love you for it and are happy for the support and for empowering them and showing them how you can work together and fight, be it big tycoons or the state. But when it comes to elections, even these people that PSM helps tend to fall back on old narratives, on the narratives of race and religion, on the narratives of mainstream parties. As the new Secretary-General of PSM, how are you going to carry forward this agenda of really empowering the masses and putting out that narrative of class politics?

Sivaranjani: Firstly, I just want to say that what PSM was doing - we never ran from our track. By me coming as the new Secretary-General, it’s not like a big upside-down change I’m going to make. It’s just to continue the pathways that we’ve been going, but of course, when more young people come into leadership, they play more roles and can enhance the struggle more. I would say that maybe I could play my part as well.

But when you talk about elections, people who we help always tell us to see the big picture. They always come and tell us: “PSM is only standing in four seats or five seats. We can’t see you as a national party. If we want you for this constituency, what are you going to change? How can you change things? Because you might merely have one vote in parliament - you will be outvoted by all these majority voices.”

Because there’s always this meaning of change - just changing the colour or the logo. Last time they said Barisan Nasional [the former ruling coalition] was our biggest enemy, now we need to overthrow that enemy. So we need to come and give full support for Pakatan Harapan [the current ruling coalition] and all these things. That was the narrative that was mainly played.

When the two-party system is successfully being executed in this country, we are being a third force. Of course, we are not being seen as a significant partner, a significant player in this political platform. They even come and convince us: “Please, you guys are very hardworking, we know that. But please, we can’t do anything. We have to vote for Pakatan Harapan [liberal and centre-left coalition] to bring changes, to get rid of UMNO-BN [United Malays National Organisation-Barisan Nasional, which formed the government for over 60 years, from 1957 until 2018 ] and all these things.”

When we hear that, we cannot see that as betrayal. That’s just people moving slowly towards that. We understand that. The issue that we are not being seen as a national party is something that we have to go back and reflect on. How do we make ourselves a national party?

PSM should think about how we want to build more, build a coalition. We have progressive and left parties like Green parties and PRM [Parti Rakyat Malaysia - Malaysian People’s Party]. How can we strategically come together and have an election pact together so we can put up more candidates in the next election? That is one of the things we have to concentrate on, and I really think this is a very important agenda for PSM as a political party moving forward.

At the same time, because we know that politically, for us to change things is long-run work - being a left party member, I understand this because we can’t work in illusion. We need to understand, we have people on the ground, we understand ground sentiments. For the past 20 years working in this left movement, I understand that change happens quite slowly, and we have to go with the flow and see how we can make progress. But at the same time, we also cannot forget about building the movement.

Dashran: That’s what I want to ask. Because elections is one aspect. On the other aspect, there is also something else you brought up, which I think is more important. Whether we like or dislike PAS [Parti Islam Se-Malaysia - Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party] and their ideology, I think PAS as a political party has done that aspect pretty well, in the sense of their grassroots strength, their movement from the ground. They have the strongest mobilising potential among the mainstream parties, and they have really grown their network. When I was on my trip to Terengganu and Kelantan [Malaysian states] before the state elections in 2023, one thing I realised is that some of the taxi drivers are PAS members. That’s how deep their roots are with the community. How do you envision building unions and movements beyond elections, like what PAS is doing, but for the progressive side, for the left agenda?

Sivaranjani: It is also an equally difficult task, being a left party and building the movement. These two things you need to make move progressively in parallel.

Some of the activists in PSM are also involved in building the movement. The Marhaen (grass roots) coalition is the front who are involved in building movements, grassroots people that we are working with now on various issues, because people come together when they have issues, they have problems. How are you going to make them be in the group even after they resolve their own issues? How can they still contribute to the movement, still contribute to bigger other issues or bigger problems?

That’s why even the Marhaen coalition has a lot of sub-movements, sub-coalitions:

– JPKK is one - the contract workers movement is one part of this Marhaen movement
– We have gig workers - how do you organise the gig workers who are the major communities that are going through massive exploitation? They are the groups that are your primary group to build movements
– We have Urban Pioneers - here and there, people are being evicted from compounds that they were staying in for ages. These people are coming together and fighting for their housing issues
– Another group is plantation workers
– There’s another community living in flats, low-cost flats - what are the issues? This is urban poverty. People who are living in low-cost flats are going through certain levels of problems as well

So we are organising these people, these groups, this rakyat, into these groups to make it strong as a people’s movement.

Each coalition has their own coordinators, and most of the coordinators are from PSM. But you see, the members of the movement don’t have to be socialist, don’t have to be leftist. They come together because there is an issue they want to fight, and they want to make changes to that issue. But that’s the platform where you can politicise people beyond their issue. “This is not your only issue, this is not your only problem, and after you solve this problem, do you think you are okay? You are good enough, you have everything achieved?” There’s a bigger issue, there’s a big picture that we call the big picture in building the movement.

You see, unions in Malaysia are only 6%. We have the most regressive thinking, and the 6% of unions we have also have very regressive thinking. How do you build the workers’ movement? People don’t even know what the meaning of unions is, and never try to even form unions. When some workers come forward to try to form a union, there’s union-busting happening rampantly, and people give up.

How do we want to build all these things? It’s a huge task which PSM and also the Marhaen coalition is doing, slowly progressing the work. But we need more people to take on all this work.

I would say one of the visions, being the party Secretary-General now, is how do we build the capacity of the members - PSM members, young members who are coming to the party - to take on all these tasks. I’m very proud to say here that the current Central Committee of PSM now is full of young members. We only have three members above 50 in the Central Committee. All the others are young members in leadership. They will have very vibrant ideas and also the energy to build the movement and the party moving forward. I think this is something I’m really looking forward to in the party - to go with these young members, how we can make the work more vibrant.

Dashran: Before we wrap up this conversation, would you have a final message?

Sivaranjani: There is no shortcut. It’s a long way for us to go. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done for the left in this country, but we are progressing. As long as neoliberal capitalism is massively growing and environmental crisis is massively growing, then we are still relevant. The left solutions are still relevant, and we have more opportunities to build a left movement.

Dashran: Jenny, thank you so much for joining me today.

Sivaranjani: Thank you so much for having me.

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