NO and its allies are creating a wave of Malay-Muslim nationalism in a bid to retake Putrajaya in the 15th general election (GE15), said academics and experts.
The rally against the Rome Statute yesterday was part of an overarching narrative to build a socio-political movement, just like the “Reformasi” and “Bersih” (reforms and clean government) rallies that helped propel Pakatan Harapan into federal power, they said.
Today, “Melayu, Islam dan Raja” (Malays, Islam and the King) is the new rallying cry for Malaysia’s opposition movement, which consists of Umno, its one-time enemy PAS and Malay rights groups such as Ummah.
The fact that this movement is built mostly on imagined fears and myths is besides the point, the academics and experts said.
What matters is that for Umno and PAS, they have discovered PH’s Achilles heel, and they are exploiting it.
“The two parties work best when they use right-wing politics to garner support,” political scientist Tunku Mohar Tunku Mohd Mokhtar said, adding that these sentiments were an effective means of mass mobilisation.
The start of that movement was a rally to oppose the International Convention to End All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) last December. Its organisers had claimed the treaty would mean the end of Malay privileges.
Critics had questioned the organisers’ reasons for going ahead with the rally after Putrajaya had said it will not ratify ICERD.
Yesterday’s rally was held under similar circumstance. Putrajaya has backtracked on its plans to accede to the treaty that will make Malaysia party to the International Criminal Court, but Ummah, a Malay rights group, announced it would still organise the protest.
In both events, the crowds were made up mostly of Umno and PAS members. Some of them were clad in white T-shirts, but, in an indication of the partisan nature of the demonstration, some rally-goers wore T-shirts bearing the names of the party divisions and state chapters they came from.
Concrete failures, imagined fears
The narrative that Malays and Muslims are under threat and that only Umno and PAS can serve the community is necessary for both parties’ political survival in the new Malaysia, said political scientist Dr Mazlan Ali.
A preliminary joint study by the Ilham Centre and the Penang Institute indicates that such an ethno-centric ideological thrust will gain traction among Malays. It found that Malays are generally conservative and trend either towards Malay or Islamic nationalism.
And this could spell trouble for PH, as the 14th general election results showed that it won 15 parliamentary seats because the Malay vote had been split between Umno and PAS candidates, said Mazlan.
“The easiest example is Pokok Sena, where Mahfuz (Omar of PH) won because of a split in the votes. The same thing occurred with Mujahid (Yusof Rawa) in Parit Buntar,” said Mazlan of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
If Umno and PAS manage to pool their supporters together for GE15, they have a high chance of wresting these seats.
But, in order to build a strong enough wave to defeat PH, the opposition needs a platform that can easily capture the hearts of minds of their target audience.
That platform of “Malays and Islam under threat” is easily understood by Malays, who are the majority of voters, said academician Dr Awang Azman Awang Pawi of Universiti Malaya.
If Umno and PAS “were just using conventional channels, such as Parliament and the media, including social media, the impact will not be big enough,” said Awang Azman.
“So, the way of getting more support is through demonstrations. In fact, PH used Bersih to mobilise mass support before GE14,” said Awang Azman of UM’s Academy of Malay studies.
But there is a difference between the PH-Bersih alliance and the Malay nationalism of the Umno-PAS pact, said UTM’s Mazlan.
“In the case of ICERD and the Rome Statute, they are holding rallies even after the government decided not to go ahead with the ratification,” argued Mazlan.
In Bersih’s case, the rallies between 2007 and 2016 were organised because the Umno-led government at the time ignored its calls for electoral reform and eradicating corruption.
Bersih’s demands were based on failures in the electoral system that BN exploited in every election. In contrast, the Malay nationalist rallies are based on imagined fears.
“It is made to seem that Malays are being oppressed. But last year, (when PH came to power), were any of the acts that dealt with Malay interests amended? Was Article 153 (on Malay privileges) touched at all?” said Mazlan.
the malaysian insight
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