PKR will never play the race card as well as Umno

“Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.”

- Hannah Arendt

PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, one of the shrewder political operatives in play, recently attempted to wave the race card in an attempt to bolster PKR’s ketuanan bona fides.

The problem with PKR is not that it wants the Malay vote. Everybody, including the DAP, should want the Malay vote, but rather how it goes about fishing for it.

Terengganu PKR chief Azan Ismail, hoping this issue will gain traction, said: “We urge the finance minister and prime minister to state their stand on this matter and what will guarantee bumiputera equity ownership.”

This basically means that PKR is attempting to accuse the government of not being Malay uber alles enough.

After all this time, after the failed attempt at sucking up to the Malay political establishment and the failed stratagems of Anwar Ibrahim, PKR still assumes that it can play the race game as Umno and somehow still cling on to its reformasi aspirations.

When Saifuddin (above) says this - "I do not think the big consortiums who received the licences will help the common people who do business at night markets, sell fried food or open stalls by the roadside in Baling, Padang Terap, Bachok or Hulu Terengganu” - he makes a good populist point.

The point was a race-neutral point that everyone could get behind, especially the majority polity who would recognise that Saifuddin was speaking specifically to them.

However, he completely destroys it by bemoaning the lack of bumi participation.

Bemoaning the lack of bumi participation implies that only bumi participants could and would help the businesses he refers to, which is blatantly wrong.

Successive failed policies demonstrate that the ketuanan ideology has failed the majority of Malays.

Furthermore, the government in various ways and entitlement programmes helps these businesses most often without oversight which results in severe wastages and, yes, corruption.

Implying that Chinese plutocrats are an antagonistic block to these businesses is merely race-baiting, which Umno also does much better.

It also places non-Malay political operatives in an uncomfortable position.

If they remain silent – which they do a lot – it makes them complicit in the narrative, and if they voice their objections on egalitarian grounds, it conforms to the propaganda that Umno promulgated all these decades of how non-Malays are an impediment to Malay economic security.

At this moment, Umno political operatives and state-sponsored actors are getting away with “insulting” the judiciary which is supposed to be sacrosanct.

When Muhyiddin Yassin was in power, they openly disagreed with the royal institution, and Umno and its tributaries have never met a sacred cow they didn’t throw under the bus if it suited their purposes. Pakatan Harapan does not have this luxury.

Umno has an accomplished record of corruption and government malfeasance.

It also has a track record of winning elections and in those days, when the idea of BN meant something, it had a track record of winning the popular vote.

In other words, a majority of Malaysians voted for BN. Umno managed for decades to balance the precautions of the Malay polity with that of the non-Malay polity.

Malay vote is all-important

But times have changed. The Malay political establishment is in agitation, which is why we get ridiculous electoral pacts like what is happening in Kelantan.

The Malay vote is all-important, which is why PKR, as a supposedly multi-racial party, is struggling.

Former prime minister (twice) Dr Mahathir Moahamd has demonised PKR as being unacceptable to the Malay community because of its multi-racial component.

Every time PKR plays the race card – and badly – they give life to this propaganda.

Umno has this grand narrative of racial supremacy. It has worked for them for decades because of the compromised electoral system and messaging which has remained relevant to its base. It is pointless fighting Umno on its turf.

Someone like Rafizi Ramli - and he is not alone - understands why it is important for the Malay polity to have an alternative but also the reality that without a clear alternative, highlighting failed strategies is useless.

PKR’s former Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli

He said: “So if they (Malays) were to choose, they would rather choose someone they can trust. If we were to change from one product to another, we want to be sure the substitute of the product can bring better value to you.”

This is something that I have been going on for years, which is that there is no real alternative to what Harapan is offering. So why not choose the original?

The problem is that PKR - and indeed the opposition - wants to go the easy route. They believe that aping Umno/BN would get them the Malay votes they need.

This is why there is this talk of a big tent, sans kleptocrats according to the DAP, but it all boils down to aligning with race supremacists in the hopes of taking the crown of Putrajaya.

The problem is, as Raifzi points out, folks will always gravitate to what they are familiar with when the so-called opposition is offering the same deal with a different package.

Keep in mind the MCA and MIC were the non-Malay vote bases for BN for decades, which is why the economic prosperity card is slowly being played up by Umno/BN again. And folks are beginning to listen.

So is there a way to talk about race without alienating people in Malaysia? Of course, there is.

Reforming the system and uplifting the Malay polity are not mutually exclusive.

In the early days of reformasi, Anwar used to claim that needs-based affirmative actions would not disenfranchise the Malay community because they were the majority in need, but this did not mean the non-Malays had to be penalised.

Of course, now, it is about not spooking the Malays. Forget about the internal schisms in PKR and Harapan but when smart leaders think that the old formula which failed Malaysia for decades is the only way to secure the Malay vote, then maybe there is no point in voting.

It would be better to be defeated as an honest alternative than defeated as a clone of Umno/BN.

And if by some miracle you win with a pack of jackals, then Malaysia is well and truly lost. - Mkini

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum - “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”

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