Playing the race and religion card

While MCA is scaring the Chinese with hudud, Umno leaders try to scare the Malays by saying that a vote for DAP will mean the disintegration of Malay rights.

COMMENT

Umno is trying to win over the Malay voters by putting Zulkifli Noordin as its candidate in Shah Alam.

“This shows that Umno is playing the race card in attempting to secure the Malay vote using Malay nationalism,” said Khalid Samad, the PAS candidate in Shah Alam, who is defending his seat.

“By accepting the top two leaders of Perkasa, namely Ibrahim Ali and Zulkifli Noordin as candidates, Umno is indicating that it is moving towards extremism as these two candidates have been rejected by PAS and PKR.”

On the other hand, MCA leaders, in particular its president, Dr Chua Soi Lek, is going to the extreme of trying to scare the Chinese by using PAS and the hudud issue.

PAS leaders have made it very clear that they will only try to introduce hudud through democratic means and that is through the amendment of the Federal Constitution.

Therefore it is clear that MCA leaders are duping the Chinese voters using the tactic of fear-mongering pertaining to hudud.

Even the BN MPs do not want hudud, thus hudud will never come to pass. If the BN MPs were so in favour of hudud, it would have been implemented long ago.

Therefore PAS will never have the numbers to implement hudud and Soi Lek is blatantly lying by saying that the implementation of hudud will be successful.

One has to know that hudud is not a blanket law with the chopping-off of hands as the punishment for theft. If, for instance, a jobless single mum experiencing financial difficulty were to steal infant formula, she would certainly not have her hand chopped off.

Scare tactics

Many women are now in favour of hudud to deal with the rampant crime of snatch thefts because hudud would definitely make those snatch thieves think twice before committing the crime.

While MCA is scaring the Chinese, Umno leaders are trying to scare the Malay voters by saying that a vote for DAP will mean the disintegration of Malay rights.

Thus, Umno and MCA will try their level best to frighten their respective communities via scare tactics using the race and religion card.

At the end of the day, Barisan Nasional is only using the strategy of “sweets and scare”: giving cash handouts to the people while scaring them at the same time.

There is no intellectual debate on the manifestos nor on economic policies. And this means that BN leaders are taking for granted that the rakyat is plain stupid and therefore primitive tactics are sufficient to help them maintain their grip on the levers of power.

BN leaders clearly think that there is no necessity to use brains to woo the rakyat. And that is the reason why the scare tactics of the 1960s are still being applied by them.

BN has never moved forward despite the transformation hype.

Putting new young faces in the 13th general election is also a move which BN has copied from the opposition from the previous general election. Similarly, with its manifesto: much of the proposals are copied from Pakatan Rakyat.

BN is Jurassic. This party should have been kept in the political museum of antiquities but for the fact that Malaysians are easily duped.

Hudud ploy

The hudud issue came about due to calculations by BN strategists that Chinese votes are needed in order for them to win the general election. And the best way to obtain support from the Chinese is none other than to use the hudud ploy.

Soi Lek has also stepped up his attacks on DAP by saying that DAP has done nothing for the Chinese but instead is collaborating with PAS on the implementation of hudud whereas MCA has done a lot for Chinese schools.

MCA’s attacks on DAP also include sponsoring advertorials in the mainstream media with slogans such as “A Vote For DAP Is A Vote For PAS” and “What Has DAP Done For You?”

BN’s two-pronged strategy is simple: scaring the Malays and the Chinese by instilling unfounded and baseless fears into their hearts and minds.

The recent bomb and arson attacks are also meant to scare voters and BN leaders have also pointed their fingers at Pakatan leaders by accusing the latter of inculcating a culture of violence among their supporters.

PAS leader, Mahfuz Omar, who is defending his Pokok Sena parliamentary seat, has threatened to take legal action against those BN leaders.

“Why should we scare the voters? We want people to come out and vote because we believe that the rakyat’s votes will carry us to Putrajaya. It is those who sense defeat who will resort to scaring the rakyat with such dirty tactics,” said Mahfuz.

The scaring of the Chinese voters by MCA and the scaring of the Malay voters by Umno is indeed a Machiavellian double-game to psychologically instil fear into the public. For MCA which has no issue to talk about, hudud is its only topic.

Many Chinese are already fed up with MCA and have seen their cowardice in dealing with big brother Umno and one issue which comes to mind is none other than the Jalan Sultan MRT issue.

MCA is dead silent on this topic and the Chinese voters have since long ago labelled MCA a “running dog” party.

Only the Malay votes and some rural Chinese votes can save MCA now, not to mention the phantom/alien votes, of course.

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.