Too much politicking…

Too much politicking leads nowhere. Instead it damages the nation and the ordinary people's wellbeing.

COMMENT

The recent religious issues concerning the Catholic Herald weekly newspaper, the Bible and terminology is worked up by certain quarters to create rifts and difficulties between Pakatan Rakyat’s component parties with the main aim being to destabilise PAS.

Knowing that religion is a sensitive issue, Pakatan’s enemies hope that playing up religious issues will cause PAS to be at loggerheads with DAP, and to a certain extent PKR even if PKR chooses to remain silent on the said issues.

If PAS fails to placate the Malay voters, Malay support will surely swing to Umno while the Christians will think of PAS as fundamentalists and not Islamic democrats.

The intention of Umno in this whole drama is to put PAS into a pot. Thus the balancing act on a tightrope is difficult for PAS.

Said Khalid Samad, the PAS Shah Alam MP, “Umno stands to be the biggest gainers in the aftermath of any controversy pertaining to religion”.

Perhaps the only thing for Pakatan to do is to keep quiet and let the issue burn itself out because there is no way Pakatan can compete with BN in regard to religion. Pakatan choosing silence is perhaps the only choice left as discretion is the better part of valour.

The reason why BN choose to focus on race and religion issues is because they want to shore up their voter base. Knowing that they can only rely on the Malay vote, they have decided to go full force for it.

After the price hikes saga which began with the increase in petrol price in early September last year, Umno realised that MCA can no longer be counted upon to deliver the Chinese votes.

As for the Indian vote, it is 50-50.

Although BN has a strong grasp on the Sabahan and Sarawakian votes, this may also begin to be lessened somewhat due to the God and Bible controversy.

Therefore as the Malay vote is the only reliable sector as well as also being the major voting bloc, Umno will do everything in its power to secure votes from this sector.

It cannot be denied that Malaysian politics is very race-based.

We are always counting on votes based on race, for example: 50% of the Malay vote, 80% of the Chinese vote, 60% of the Indian vote and so on and so forth.

Strategies for polls are also race-based as many party strategists will be saying ‘We need to increase the percentage of the Malay vote and the East Malaysian vote’.

Taking all this into consideration and with the next general election still a long time away, Umno can see that the battle will be between themselves and PAS.

Thus Umno takes the early move to strike at PAS via religion issues.

Tight situation for PAS

Umno being the big brother in BN does not need to take the views of the component parties into consideration, unlike PAS in Pakatan.

This means that whenever race and religion issues come to the fore, the one in difficulty will always be PAS.

On the other hand, if PAS were to act like Umno, PAS will be worse off as the former will also lose the non-Malay votes so PAS must stay moderate.

In actual fact, Umno’s strategy of trying to gain votes using race and religion will backfire if only the Malays wake up to their methods.

As of now, Umno is having the upper hand with certain people in the party using the spectre of May 13 to garner Malay support.

Moderate Malays must thus be bold enough to speak up. The average Malays (whether urban or rural) must wake up to the fact that all races need to work together for the good of the nation.

Once the Malays wake up to this fact, we will all be able to harness our potential and talents to bring the nation forward.

A nation wherein its people are divided will surely fall. Look at the way how our Asean neighbours have bypassed us.

We have got to unite to vote for a good government. We must stop giving power to an inefficient government. A government is only as strong as the power the citizens give them and right now the rakyat has given a lot of power to an inept government who have yet to succeed in reining in the soaring inflation.

Be that as it may, it is time to let the government know that we are unhappy with their administration and management of the nation.

Everyone must realise that too much politicking leads nowhere. Instead it is damaging the nation and the ordinary people’s wellbeing as the rakyat’s welfare is put on the backburner.

Politicking should cease with immediate effect and the people’s interest be given priority in times of economic hardship such as now.

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.