Tantrums, threats and trends

Malaysians must test such statements as Mahathir made yesterday for reliability and credibility.

COMMENT

by Francis Felix Jeubelie

Malaysia is being torn apart by characters intent on fulfilling their malevolent agenda. Machiavellian personalities whose pet peeve is attacking their beleaguered foes and who churn out fallacies, allegations and over-generalized statements daily.

The slide in education standards has robbed many of the ability to analyse information and its veracity. When misperceptions or lies receive mileage, many believe the content when these go viral in social media.

Malaysians must remove their blinkers to analyse and test the contents of speeches and articles for reliability and credibility and to question the source before accepting, rejecting or sharing them.

For instance, a website yesterday carried an article that quoted Mahathir Mohamad as saying, “Umno members and their leaders must realise that Umno and, with it, BN will lose if Datuk Seri Najib leads Umno to GE14.”

Today, such threats and baseless assumptions hold no water. A victory or loss in any election does not necessarily depend on the main leader, but on many other salient and hidden factors. Otherwise, why would volumes of research be carried out in this area?

Voters are smart enough not to vote by party lines but on the qualifications and track record of the candidate. In GE13, anti-BN sentiments robbed many voters of their senses when they voted for parites and not by the merit of the candidates. They realised their folly in the post-election period when inexperienced or poorly qualified leaders failed to keep their electoral promises. Hence, GE14 may well be the watershed for a new beginning for Malaysia, but not because of Najib.

That statement fails to consider how some political parties have strongholds in certain constituencies. Regardless of who the Prime Minister is, trends show that those constituencies tend to vote for the opposition. Therefore, one cannot blame Najib for the losses there.

The same applies to some Umno strongholds.

Presently, the main determinant of who may swing the GE14 results is not Najib, but definitely Sabah.

Here’s another worrying statement from Mahathir: “When Umno loses, the Malays will curse the leadership which has made the party so weak until it is rejected by the Malays themselves. Once Umno loses, it cannot be rehabilitated any more.”

I totally disagree with the statement, which some may perceive as an affront to the Malay community. I do not believe Malays will curse the leadership because it is against their culture, nature and religion. Malays have courage, wisdom and class.

If a party is weak, it can be due to many reasons, ranging from leadership, grassroots support or winds of change. When weaknesses appear, the weak will be strengthened and change will be offset.

Kant and many other thinkers propagated the triadic idea of thesis-antithesis-synthesis to explain social change. We see this happening in Umno and many other ruling parties. When change occurred in history, seldom was there a situation in which rehabilitation was not possible. Only a naysayer with little faith in humankind would hypothesize that rehabilitation will not occur.

Change is inevitable in any society in any period. Things may not go our way, or that of the leaders’. What is vital is how people embrace change and how leaders adapt to changes.

The two statements quoted above are typical of black-and-white thinking, a fallacy involving a situation with two or limited alternatives.

Malaysians are not children to be given only two options of letting the PM lead or forcing him to step down. Malaysians have brains to think and can see beyond Najib. Malaysians have a Cabinet of Ministers. Malaysians enjoy democracy and a two-party system in Parliament where checks and balances occur. Malaysians are smart enough to know a government does not depend on one person but on the entire august house.

Stop the tantrums,innuendoes, threats and look at current trends. Malaysians have brains to think for themselves.

Francis Felix Jeubelie is an FMT reader.