Pro-Pakatan urban folk preaching to empty audience, says Kayveas

Datuk M. Kayveas claims that city folks are largely pro-opposition. - Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, June 17 — Malaysia’s moneyed urbanites are largely pro-opposition because they can afford to spend their days trolling on the Internet and defame others, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) president Datuk M. Kayveas has said. 

But the former deputy minister claimed these city folk were the only ones enjoying their own “Internet games”, predicting that at least 80 per cent of the population would not be swayed by their views. 

“Overall, if you look at these urbanites... giving the impression that they are rolling over to support the opposition... it’s a very thin majority and it is not going to produce any effect,” Kayveas told The Malaysian Insider during a recent interview at his office here. 

“The mentality of these urbanites is only to criticise and to make comments which, if you ask me, 80 or 90 per cent of the population does not bother.” 

“Those who bother are only these few who are playing their Internet games. The masses actually do not bother,” he insisted. 

The former Senator and Taiping MP was speaking in reference to the participants of Bersih 3.0, which had drawn a significant segment of the country’s urban middle class to the streets to rally for free and fair elections. 

The April 28 event, which was organised by election watchdog Bersih 2.0, was also backed by the federal opposition pact Pakatan Rakyat (PR) which is said to draw most of its support from the urban electorate. 

Kayveas did not dispute PR’s urban support, but said it was no big surprise. 

He said urbanites are more often than not anti-establishment in nature and are always seeking “change”, even if this change is unhealthy for the country. 

“The urban mindset is always — ‘nevermind, I am tired of Umno so let’s change it.’ It does not matter, you could put anyone (as candidate), a person who does not know about politics, who does not serve the people, who has not lifted a finger to help any poor person in their lives,” he said. 

“This urban group of people, they are not the type who go to the ground, go to rural areas and work, assist the poor and do charity, work with the poor and the ‘have-nots’.” 

Kayveas singled out Bersih 2.0 co-chair Datuk Ambiga Sreenavasan as an example of such an urbanite, saying he was doubtful that the former Bar Council president had ever helped the poor in her life. 

“No. They are the type who already ‘have’. They have education, they have enough. They can spend money in Starbucks and Coffee Bean. 

“While the poor fellows pay RM1 for their coffee, they can pay RM13 or RM14 and take out their laptops and use the free Internet and WIFI to whack the government,” he sniped. 

Kayveas added that the opposition have been using their supporters to spread its teachings using social media tools, 90 per cent of which he says are false or “half-truths”. 

Describing this as “politics without merit”, he warned that the “changes” that urban Malaysians are clamouring for may be harmful to the country. 

“So many countries that suddenly wanted change have fallen because the change is so drastic, or it is irrelevant or the people are not ready yet,” he said. 

Malaysia is heading into its 13th general election soon, a contest that is expected to be the stiffest in the nation’s history. 

In Election 2008, the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) pact lost its customary two-thirds majority and ceded four states and Kelantan to the opposition.