A radical step to dispel Malay hostility towards DAP

 

From Terence Netto

DAP is to be lauded for continuing to strive to dispel Malay suspicion of the party.

The decision of DAP MP for Segambut, Hannah Yeoh to wear a hijab while visiting a mosque in her constituency must be seen as part of attempts to tamp down Malay qualms about the party.

Of course, propitiatory gestures won’t be enough to deflect Malay unease with DAP.

Umno’s decades-old demonisation of the party as anti-Malay, anti-Islam and anti-royalty has left a residue that is difficult to extirpate from the Malay psyche.

Hence a more imaginative campaign of winning Malay support is needed rather than relying on symbolic gestures such as Yeoh’s mosque attire.

DAP has been in control of the Penang government for 13 years now through its dominance in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition that heads the state executive.

The party has taken care to make sure that in PH’s annual budgets, allocations for Muslim causes suffer no diminution in comparison with those allocated by past governments.

If anything, the allocations – for tahfiz schools, mosque refurbishment and Muslim welfare purposes – are progressively augmented.

However, in one area, DAP has not been bold or imaginative enough to try something that would be radical, if not revolutionary, in scope.

It can see that its coalition partner PKR finds it difficult to raise a credible leader from among its throng of Malay support in the state of Penang.

Though PH is led by a Malay leader from Penang, Anwar Ibrahim’s presence at the apex of the federal opposition coalition has not had the beneficent effect of spawning a credible surrogate at the state level who could occupy the deputy chief minister’s role with panache.

In fact, PKR occupants of the role, from the time of the coalition’s stunning capture of Penang in GE12 in 2008, have been insipid.

It is not exactly constructive to DAP to allow the notion to gain ground that under the banyan tree of DAP dominance of Penang, no Malay leader can grow.

Would not a discrete and resolute DAP effort at finding Malay leadership talent and moulding it to occupy a niche in the PH leadership stakes in the state be seen as a major contribution by the party towards helping the Malays?

One might counter this argument by contending that it would be easier for DAP to find and mould a Malay leader from within the party’s own ranks than search for and coach one from within the ambit of PKR’s Malay cohort.

The problem with this is that the deputy chief minister 1’s post is a PKR preserve and the occupant has to be Malay.

But the Malay cohort of PKR Penang has thus far not succeeded in throwing up a leader that would make Malay voters in the state sit up and notice.

This reality is fodder for anti-DAP propagandists who could contend that no Malay leader can come up from within the state PH ranks simply because DAP would not allow it.

True, this idea would be easy as a proposition but formidably difficult to bring off. But, really, an effort of this kind, if successful, would go a long way in dispelling the notion that DAP is anti-Malay.

Of course, if found, such a Malay leader would run the risk of being portrayed as a DAP stooge.

But a puppet cannot be regarded as a good leader and so the one that emerges would have to navigate the shoals such that he is credibly an effective leader and seen as such in his own right.

No doubt, this proposition may strike one as too idealistic to be real.

History tells us realities are always defeating ideals but ideals have a way of taking vengeance on the facts that momentarily imprison them.

DAP is fettered by Malay hostility to the party. It can shrug its shoulders at this reality or it can imaginatively emancipate itself through discrete execution of a radical idea: DAP help in spawning credible Malay leaders. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.