Why Malay parties are in a panic

They have finally realised that the community is losing interest in them.

COMMENT

Malay politics often consists of what our leaders say we want and not what we say we want. Every Malay political organisation – from the G25 to Perkasa, from Umno to PKR – has its own vision of what the Malay on the street wants. To be fair, these groups do represent a segment of the Malay population. But then, we make up 60 percent of the national population, and even Umno has a membership of only three million.

Sixty percent of 31 million – that’s a lot of voices that are presumably being brought to the fore by these groups. However, recent declines in Malay voter registration and the scramble for positioning among the country’s Malay parties point to their experiencing something of a panic. Voter apathy is a very real threat in our current socio-political scenario, and it seems like our leaders have finally realised that the community is starting to lose interest in them.

Our most recent political development of note is the love triangle between PAS, Umno, and Perkasa. All three shout for unity, claiming that we are under attack and must be defended – but from what? The Chinese? Let’s be real here; the Chinese make up less than 30 percent of the population. So the argument that they pose a threat to the Malays is fundamentally flawed.

The real reason the Malay political position is threatened is that our leaders don’t know what we want, and they keep insisting that what they want is what we want. Our leaders have become comfortable twisting the sentiments of the community to their own ends, instead of actually going down to ground to learn to know us. They have painted themselves into the unenviable corner of having to reverse-engineer years of decisions to find some sort of common ground with the community.

That being said, between Umno and PAS, what real choice does the community have? PAS would be the choice party for conservatives, but an alliance between PAS and Umno will not sit well with followers of the teachings of Allahyarham Tok Guru Nik Aziz, and moderate and liberal Malays are certain to be alarmed by the surge of the ulama faction within PAS, which has driven progressives in the party to jump ship to form Parti Amanah Negara.

In truth, as a community, we find ourselves generally between the conservatives and the liberals. There are few who stand on the extreme edges of the spectrum. Most of us are moderates who see good values in both liberalism and conservatism. We believe the best way forward lies somewhere in the grey.

Our political parties have become too spoiled, resorting to either black or white to gain sympathy and traction easily. However, that strategy was only going to work for so long, and the result is the apathy they see today towards their policies and ideologies. It’s hard to see a PAS-Umno alliance ultimately doing any good – after all, the two parties have done this dance before, and it has always ended in tears – but it does show a concerted effort to recapture the interest of the community.

As a gambit however, it’s somewhat weak. Until our leaders learn they can no longer put words in our mouths, they will continue to see us rejecting them. We as a community need to be engaged by our leaders because we are tired of not being represented in the very halls of power where they claim to be defending our interests.