That familiar Malay tune in Semenyih

“If Mahathir cannot help create a wave of change among the rural Malay voters for the 14GE in the remaining 100 days, then no other political leader could accomplish this ‘Mission Impossible’.”

– Lim Kit Siang

The quote by Lim Kit Siang that opens this piece is open for debate. Most post-election analyses have determined that Mahathir did not create the Malay tsunami that his allies hoped he would.

For the record, in numerous pieces before the 14th general election, I advocated that Harapan should stop waffling and endorse the former prime minister for the top job, using the same line of reasoning as Kit Siang.

The upcoming Semenyih by-election comes on the heels of the Cameron Highlands debacle. Post-May 9, the Malay power brokers in Harapan and their non-Malay enablers have failed to counter the Malay and Islamic narratives of the Umno/PAS union. This by-election is seen as a bellwether for Malay support of Harapan, and Harapan political operatives tell me that they are leaving nothing to chance.

If you thought that Harapan playing the BN game in Cameron Highlands was bad, you will witness the full glory of neo-BN in the Semenyih by-election. Most analysts agree that Harapan has to play the race and religion card in Semenyih. This has received blowback from many quarters, which puzzles me.

Harapan partisans have been calling and emailing me, outraged that the strategy seems to be to court the Malay vote in the upcoming Semenyih by-election, which runs contrary to the idea of New Malaysia. Firstly, there is no New Malaysia. This should be evident by now.

If Bersatu and Mahathir were needed before the election to court the rural and semi-urban Malay vote, why is there opposition to tactics and strategies to maintain the Malay vote post-May 9? Lim Kit Siang said, “Pakatan Harapan lacks any personality capable of convincing rural Malay voters to support the pact, aside from Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.”

In 2017, Kit Siang said that while he did not agree with all of Mahathir’s reasoning for not allowing the DAP to contest under the Bersatu ticket – if the DAP were de-registered – he understood his stand. Meanwhile, Mahathir said that PPBM (Bersatu) needed to remain a Malay party because the Malays were still communal.

Mahathir said: “If they (Malay voters) see a multi-racial party, they will not support it. They (Pakatan Rakyat) got a lot of support from the Chinese, but little Malay support and without it, you can’t win. So we can replace Umno with our group (Bersatu), not by being like Umno, but we would be a Malay party.”

Kit Siang seemed fine with this and offered a kind of restatement of old Alliance-style politics when he claimed – “Bersatu was still more Malaysian than Umno, as the former wants Malays to unite and work with other citizens, while the latter wants Malaysians to remain Malays, Chinese and Indians and is even trying to polarise the next elections as a battle between the Malays and Chinese.”

So this whole idea of Bersatu and Malay power brokers playing the race and religion card in Semenyih as something anathema to New Malaysian politics is horse manure. There are two kinds of partisans. The ones who understand they were making a deal with the devil to oust Najib, and those who believed there was a new Malaysia.

'RM90 million scandal a positive strategy'

Bersatu and PAS people who I talk to are feeling good about the upcoming Semenyih by-election. Umno has never been the underdog, one said, and if we take Semenyih, we would have demonstrated that we are still a force to be reckoned with in the Malay community, an old Umno friend, said recently.

Meanwhile, PAS political operatives tell me that they are going to be playing up the “persecution” card in their campaigning. “This RM90 million scandal could be a positive strategy for us, because the AG is a non-Malay, and we can argue that this is some sort of religious persecution,” one of them said.

Indeed, for people who held their noses and voted for Harapan, knowing full well what they were getting into, the stench is becoming unbearable. But what else is there for Harapan to do, asked a non-Malay political operative who spoke to me a few days ago. People, non-Malays, talk about the “Malay” strategy as if it were something in the past and not the strategy Harapan employed to give it federal power.

I keep asking Malay political operatives in Harapan why they do not offer a counter-Malay narrative to what Umno and PAS are offering. The answer is always the same. The grassroots are not interested. Those who voted for Harapan are mocked by those who did not vote for Harapan, as being lied to by Mahathir. They took a chance on us and now we have to deliver like Umno, a Harapan political backer informed me.

I argued that this is the problem. The Malay political elite does not want to change the narrative. The non-Malay establishment has calculated that it is better that they play along, instead of making waves, allowing the discourse to be dominated by this New Malaysia horse manure which plays into the hands of the far right.

I often reference this Bersatu strategist I like talking to because she gives it to me straight: “Commander, it is like this. The Malays are in a win-win situation now. Those who did not vote for us are not going to be marginalised by Harapan, and they know it.

“Those who voted for us are a bit confused as to what exactly the Harapan Malay agenda is. PAS and Umno are pointing to those policies which they say usurp Malay rights and Islam. We have to play the race and religion card and if any non-Malay member says how can we do this, they are liars because they knew this would be a fight for the Malay vote.”

So, the real question about playing the Malay tune, in Semenyih and beyond, is how far right is the Malay Harapan establishment willing to go, to defeat the Umno and PAS union, and how far is the non-Malay establishment willing to follow the Harapan Malay establishment?

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of Persatuan Patriot Kebangsaan. - Mkini