The harsh reality of our politics

Umno has a 100% hold on the Malay mind, there is nothing anyone in Pakatan can do about this.

COMMENT

Truly, Barisan Nasional looks set to win the 14th general election. The reason is simple enough: it is because BN has managed to win over the larger portion of the Malay voters.

Malays make up 67.9% of the population and the voting pattern resembles the population demographics. And with Malays now going back to BN due to BR1M and other incentives, the opposition is losing ground.

This is the reason why the ulama faction in PAS are advocating for PAS to leave Pakatan Rakyat (PR). The ulamas think that PAS will garner more Malay votes by being a stand-alone party.

In a local English daily dated Sept 16, 2013 under the title ‘MCA: Do not sideline any ethnic group’, MCA president, Dr Chua Soi Lek was quoted as saying: “It would be politically more difficult for the Barisan Nasional to get support from the non-bumiputeras if government policies sidelined any particular group…Najib had reiterated he had initiated a lot of policy changes that benefited the non-bumiputeras and he was often criticised by the bumiputeras.”

Chua is just saying those above words for the sake of saying something. More on this later.

Logically speaking, once BN obtains total Malay support, they have more than enough votes to win the general election. Even if all the Chinese and all the Indians were to vote for Pakatan, it is futile.

One has to take into consideration that BN has a massive fixed deposit vote bank in the form of the 1.4 million civil servants, 700,000 pensioners, teachers, uniformed personnel, the Felda, Felcra and Risda folks, the Orang Asli and the indigenous peoples in Sabah and Sarawak not to mention the BN-friendly foreign workers who arrived 10 years ago and will surely be getting their citizenship papers and voting rights come the 14th general election.

With the re-delineation exercised scheduled to take place end of this year, Pakatan will be facing a wipe-out. One must not forget that after the re-delineation exercise in year 2003, the opposition experienced a wipe-out in the 2004 general election.

Thus the coming re-delineation exercise is a bad omen for Pakatan Rakyat.

Back to Chua’s statements – the government is not going to listen to Chua or any other Chinese leader because they know they can do without Chinese votes unless PAS can step up their game to woo the Malays.

The bogeyman

On the other hand, PAS members and politicians have always did the utmost to woo the rural Malays by attending all their events for example weddings, funerals and baby-naming ceremonies but all in vain.

PAS has also donated to rural victims of floods and fires and organised gotong-royong, activities for the Malay youths and mosque programmes but all these have not yielded fruit – the rural Malays are still 100% loyal to Umno.

So much so that when they come to the PAS Service Centre for financial assistance, Mohamad Sabu, the PAS deputy president asked them why they voted for Umno then.

Mohamad also told them that as PAS is not in the federal government, PAS has very limited funds.

“Another reason for PAS’ failure to capture Malay votes is that Umno has succeeded in using the Chinese to scare the Malays. Malays voted for BN because they think that the Chinese want to become the prime minister and turn the nation into a republic. These baseless fears imbued into the heart and soul of the Malays will always make them vote for BN,” said Nizar Jamaluddin the PAS state assemblyman for Changkat Jering.

Despite PAS members telling the Malays to discard their siege mentality, the Malays still continue to think of the Chinese as their bogeyman.

Actually even if PAS were to leave Pakatan, PAS will still fail to garner Malay support. And PAS will lose Chinese votes too which means that PAS will be in a worse off position than before.

Going by this premise, it is better for PAS to remain in Pakatan.

“The Malay mindset is such that they worship only Umno because for the Malay, their existence hinges on Umno’s survival. Umno is the be-all and end-all for the Malays who think that if there is no more Umno, then there is no more Malay. This thinking is part and parcel of the Malay psyche,” opined Khalid Samad the PAS Shah Alam MP.

Umno therefore has a 100% hold on the Malay mind. Again there is nothing anyone in Pakatan can do about this.

Pakatan must thus focus on being a strong opposition instead of wasting time harbouring hopes of capturing Putrajaya. This is the harsh reality of Malaysian politics.

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.