Umno's fixation with DAP will be the doom of Malaysia

“True goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organisation of the polity. ... What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.” 

– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

I have no idea how effective Bersatu will be when it formally joins the Muafakat Nasional coalition because getting entangled in a spider's web does not seem like an effective political stratagem. Umno Youth, which has traditionally been the attack dog for the hegemon, has cited five compelling reasons why Bersatu’s entry would cause unease in the grassroots.

Take what Youth chief Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki (above) said was one of the reasons why the grassroots were upset with Bersatu joining the coalition – "... the demeaning statements made by Bersatu leaders in the past when still part of the Harapan government.”

Asyraf used the example of the current prime minister bad-mouthing Umno, but what is really important is that Bersatu leaders had openly admitted to using the DAP as a punching bag like what a Bersatu member, and now Pejuang (is that the new name?) member, did when he said this:

"Looking at Umno, when there were big issues which we could not address, we would talk about DAP, Chinese chauvinism and how Lim Kit Siang becoming prime minister would destroy Malaysia, that the Malays would disappear, and the mosques can no longer air the azan.

"I admit that I too have said such things, in front of a 100 percent Malay audience. Thinking back, I feel guilty and a sense of regret," Mukhriz Mahathir (photo) told Malaysiakini in an interview. 

Asyraf forgets that before Umno and PAS decided to desperately cling together, Umno over the decades had said horrible things about PAS. This is why Umno had to do all those roadshows, which was a form of mea culpa, to placate the PAS grassroots.

The raison d'etre of Muafakat National seems to be the continuing demonisation of the DAP. Umno’s Ahmad Maslan made that abundantly clear with his clarion call to Umno members when he said of the coalition:

“Kita tidak mahu DAP memerintah semula. Kekuatan DAP ini ialah kepada perpecahan Melayu. DAP tidak ada sebarang kekuatan jika Melayu berpadu dan Melayu ingin bersatu dalam MN. Jadi kita perlu rasional dan menerima segalanya.”

Of course, this is not true. The DAP, as usual, is the excuse that Umno has used for decades, especially when it was in peril, which the Umno Youth leader does not want to acknowledge but Mukhriz did, as did the old maverick and numerous Malay leaders when they were in the opposition.

The DAP, of course, is still the main punching bag for the Malay establishment as defined by Umno. The Sheraton Move was a godsend to Umno. It redefined the narrative of a failing political hegemon and reinforced the narrative that Umno is the lynchpin to whatever Malay uber alles coalition comes into being.

Every Umno, PAS and any other Malay establishment figures know that demonising the DAP is propaganda. They know that every time something goes wrong with their policies or to cover their behinds when it comes to the infighting in their political parties, blaming the DAP is an effective strategy that will distract from their failings.

The DAP can take cold comfort in the fact that whatever political wounds it self-inflicts will always be overshadowed by the virulent attacks against it by Umno and the Malay establishment. This is damaging to the country, but makes it easier to rally the political base.

The DAP is in a difficult position. On the one hand, in the social media scene, it has the support of anonymous netizens who, more often than not, do more damage to the DAP's agenda than the politicians who control the levers of power in this country.

For decades the agenda of the Malay political hegemony has been the creation of a monolith Malay polity. This obviously has failed. The continued existence of PAS, the various schisms over the decades of Umno, but most importantly, the ejection of the charismatic Anwar Ibrahim from Umno paradise points to a polychromatic Malay polity.

The one constant has always been that the DAP has been the target, the excuse as to why the “Malays” are not united. Umno conflates the point that the DAP has benefited from a diverse Malay polity with the idea that the DAP engineers the political schisms within the Malay political establishment.

As someone who has argued that the DAP could not organise an orgy in a brothel, this idea that the DAP has any influence in the Malay polity, or even in the Malay establishment, is ahistorical and ridiculous. Indeed, what the DAP has demonstrated is that when backed with Malay power structures, they instinctively fill the mould of any other compliant non-Malay power brokers operating in the Malay establishment.

During its brief stint in power, what rational people remember of the DAP are the numerous times it let down the base to support the political machinations of Malay power structures – weak Malay power structures, I might add – to the detriment of the base. In fact, non-Malays were lectured by the DAP on the virtue of pragmatism and every time the DAP folded, the “base” was told to suck it up.

As I discussed in "A Malay Malaysia", citing Syed Husin Ali's comments about an eventual class conflict within the Malay community if they were the only “race” in this country:

“Why do you think the disenfranchised and the working class are prey to Islamic extremists? Why do you think Islamic extremists find ample opportunity to recruit in academic institutions? The answer is because young, disenfranchised people slowly awaken to the fact that the system screws them over, while rich people are not subject to the same laws as them.” 

All Umno will do, with this propaganda, is hasten the demise of middle ground Malaysian politics and this will doom Malaysia.

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he hopes young people will assume the mantle of leadership if there is to be any hope for this country. - Mkini

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT