BN scores own goal

What if you went to fight in a boxing match and when you arrived you found that your awesome opponent has punched himself up so much that defeating him would be much easier? In fact, you now have a real chance of defeating him where previously the contest was weighted very much in his favour.

This simple analogy is apt to describe what Prime Minister Najib Razak has done in his frenzied efforts to stop the Bersih rally. Najib and his cohorts fear that the rally will galvanize the people against BN although this conclusion is strange about a non-political rally to press for free and fair elections. What they have done is to imagine a threat which did not exist in the first place and then proceed to fulfill it.

PSM 6 and the T-shirt Revolution

The high-handed action of the police to arrest opposition members wearing yellow in defiance of any known law does not endear this regime to the people. The sweeping arrests have created the impression of a police state. The MP for Gopeng, Dr Lee Boon Chye was arrested as soon as he arrived at an Ipoh wet market just for wearing a yellow T-shirt which is not even a Bersih T-shirt. This respected cardiologist was also handcuffed like a common criminal and led to a police truck. Hello! Are the police working hard to make the voters hate BN?

Detaining 6 members of Parti Socialist Malaysia without trial under the Emergency Ordinance which is equivalent to the ISA on ridiculous charges of spreading communist ideology and waging war against the King is another bad mistake which will backfire on BN. The unjust detention of the ‘Hindraf 5’ galvanized Indians to vote against BN in the last general election. Is the Home Minister out to create a ‘PSM 6’ to repeat the effect?

The specious charge of traffic congestion and loss of business do not hold water. If there is any widespread traffic congestion it will be created by the police in their attempt to lock down the city. Besides we often have celebrations, street concerts and international conferences which involve public mass gathering and road closures. Should the Merdeka Day parade be cancelled because it causes traffic congestion and loss of business to shopkeepers?

No well informed person in Malaysia can say our elections are free and fair with a straight face. Vote buying is rampant and perpetrated shamelessly by none other than the prime minister with his infamous “I help you, you help me” line.

Phantom voters populate the electoral rolls, government machinery is used for campaigning and the state controlled mainstream media is banned from carrying the opposition’s message. Efforts to correct this with the Election Commission have come to naught and public pressure is the only avenue left.

Thank you for the music

The Bersih rally has been given far more publicity than the organizers ever dreamed of. Everyone from the housewife to the cobbler, the garbage collector to the grass cutter are now aware of this rally; even my aged mother who has never bothered about politics has heard of it. Malaysians are now wondering what is it about a peaceful rally for free and fair elections that BN is so afraid of. The message has been spread wide and clear – is BN so dependent on unfree and unfair election for victory?

Efforts to demonize the rally in the state controlled electronic and media does not work like the old times. Malaysians have already regarded and discounted the supine mainstream media like the BN mouthpiece that they are. We now have alternative sources of news from the online world and people are so tightly networked together that sharing information is fast and easy. Nobody believes the tired state propaganda that the rally is out to create chaos or aims to overthrow the government.

If the rally had been allowed to proceed peacefully with the police involved in traffic control and keeping rival marchers apart, BN would have scored political points. Young voters whom BN is trying to court would be impressed. Najib can even trumpet to the outside world how tolerant and democratic Malaysia is in allowing peaceful demonstrations.

In one form or another, the rally will proceed

Even if the rally did not proceed, BN has landed body blows on themselves. But the rally will proceed and marchers will be met with wooden batons, tear gas and water cannons in a shameful scene for the outside world to witness.

The Home Ministry’s effort to contain the damage by instructing their media lackeys not to report on police abuses is parochial and delusional. The international press will certainly not bow down to this childish request and anybody with a mobile phone is a potential reporter nowadays.

The world has changed so much that old high-handed and forceful methods to contain popular sentiment do not work anymore and only serve to backfire on the perpetrators. In the new political environment the public wants engagement, not suppression. Najib has effectively obliterated years of an intense charm offensive with Malaysians with his ludicrous over reaction to a peaceful rally.

Is there nobody in Umno who can see the harm they are doing to themselves? But there are few smart people left in the top echelon of Umno. They did not achieve their position through intellectual prowess but by political street fighting, influence peddling, vote buying and backstabbing. They are the same people who think that the opposition can be countered by the gutter politics of sodomy charges or sex video. Sad, but we are governed by these people.

- Malaysia Chronicle