By Kee Thuan ChyeIn returning the parliamentary seat to Barisan Nasional, most of the Malay and Indian voters in the constituency seem to prefer remaining safely within their cocoon of ignorance about the reality of what is happening outside their kawasan. Many of them are mere rural yokels, city slickers might say, and therefore excused from wanting to see the larger picture.
Many, perhaps, are incapable of seeing the subterfuge behind the BN's gargantuan effort to win their votes. They took the money, the bribes, the promises of development, and felt beholden to the giver: never mind that such bribery was a form of corruption; they became complicit.
Most Chinese voters rejected the old corrupt ways. More than 75 per cent of them voted for Pakatan Rakyat, advising one another to yong ngan thhai (open your eyes). Some rejected duit kotor handouts; others took the money and voted against the giver. They were aware of the larger world, of the legacy of lies and letdowns from more than 50 years of BN rule. Why weren't the Malay and Indian voters as clued in?
Malay voters were worried about losing their rights, no doubt, after being bombarded with BN propaganda gushing from Utusan Malaysia and TV3.
Indian voters suffered from myopia and amnesia, the big Hindraf march of late 2007 expressing the frustration of more than 50 years of Indian marginalisation all but forgotten. They went for the short-term gains.
A hollow victory
The BN's majority of 1,725 votes for its candidate, P. Kamalanathan, and his sponsors, Najib Abdul Razak and Umno, represent a hollow victory. Were they to objectively assess their returns from the money and machinery thrown into the effort, they would have to admit they could have scored better. And if they were honest about it, they would also acknowledge that the subterfuge made their victory less deserved, less meaningful.
Where did the money come from? Some, no doubt, from the Treasury, money from taxpayers.
Najib promised RM3 million to a Chinese school in Rasa if BN won: that school is not even in the list of Chinese schools slated to receive government aid. As a taxpayer, I don’t agree to such aid to a Chinese school in return for votes. More importantly, as a taxpayer, I don’t subscribe to money politics.
In such an instance, can a citizen sue the leader of the ruling party for making use of public funds for dubious purposes? Perhaps it’s something worth looking into.
Najib also allocated to an Indian temple the land on which it had illegally been built. Did he not condone an illegal action by making it legal through the gift of land? Worse, he displayed bad form in openly stating that he expected the community to reciprocate by voting for the BN. And this coming from no less than a prime minister.
It was just as disgraceful for Najib to say when he first went to the ground: “Even before winning, we are already giving out ang pows. If we win, the ang pows will be bigger.” What message is he sending out to the people of his 1Malaysia? What values for our young?
It was morally wrong. So wrong any level-headed person would have seen it. Said a reader in Malaysiakini: “How do you end corruption when the government practises it blatantly in this Hulu Selangor buy-election?”
Defeat of rakyat power
As in the 2008 general election, Hulu Selangor produced a black-and-white distinction between good guys and bad guys, just like Hollywood westerns of old -- something like The Magnificent 7 (or rather The Seven Samurai, which provided the inspiration for it). The sad exception was that, where in both movies the underdog won despite lack of resources and firepower, in Hulu Selangor the underdog lost.
The defeat was more poignant for rakyat power being defeated by government power.
Carnival time during the by-election (Photo: Fahmi Fadzil)
The volunteers who worked so hard behind Pakatan Rakyat’s candidate, Zaid Ibrahim, gave freely of themselves. They were committed, from being committed to the idea of change.
They checked the people sent on buses to voting centres to make sure they were not phantom voters. They went from door to door to impart to voters the message of change. They blogged. They wrote articles for online media. They tweeted to spread the latest developments. They spent their own time and money.
They were men and women who toiled for an ideal. They dignified an otherwise dirty by-election.
Dignity is a key word here. Pakatan Rakyat leader Anwar Ibrahim said at the coalition’s huge final rally in Kuala Kubu Baru on election eve, “It is a question of dignity for the people of Hulu Selangor. Let us not because of RM200 sell our dignity. Tomorrow is the day to regain our dignity ... no one can take it from us.”
The majority of voters paid no heed. And BN showed no dignity. Those who voted for the party, by endorsing a lack of dignity, collaborated in diminishing the value of dignity. Unless and until the Malaysian electorate can uphold dignity, we will continue to be ruled by the less than dignified, those who will stoop to anything to ensure victory for themselves, those who will do that which is wrong and refuse to admit it.
Same old dirty ways
Unless and until the Malaysian electorate holds high the need for dignity, we will not get change.
Najib called the by-election a referendum on his performance as PM. How reliable is that a measure if you throw ang pows around and tell people bluntly that, in return, they should vote for BN? A paid-for endorsement is not true endorsement. Didn’t he want a genuine appraisal? In any case, with BN getting 24,977 out of the total 48,935 votes – endorsement by just 51.1 per cent of voters – the jury’s still out.
What emerges clearly is that BN, or rather Umno, will not change its ways; it still plays by the old dirty tactics.
One of the declared aims of Najib’s New Economic Model is to weed out corruption. That should include money politics, which is certainly a form of corruption.
Those NEM reforms, in any case, face resistance from within his own party, which means he may, at best, be able to give only a promise of change or a semblance of it without delivering on the real thing. To keep himself in power, he might not want to rock the Umno boat too much. If he does and the warlords take over, that could be even worse for Malaysia.
Either way, it would be pointless to give the BN the mandate at the next general election if we want change and a chance to rejuvenate Malaysia.
Challenge for Pakatan
The problem, as seen at Hulu Selangor, is how to get the people who voted for BN to understand any concept of change if they can succumb so easily to money politics? If that’s the mentality and level of maturity of these voters – and there must be many times more of such throughout the country – how can we expect them to vote for change?
That is the big challenge for Pakatan to overcome. It must take the bull by the horns now and show itself as a viable alternative, not just rely on winning sympathy from voters by criticising the BN government and exposing its mistakes and shortcomings.
The media have already begun to spin the line that Pakatan is tearing the nation apart with “disruptive” politics. To counter this, Pakatan must proactively and aggressively take to the people its vision of a new Malaysia, and show how it can govern when the time comes and what its policies will be.
There is no time to waste. Pakatan should have started yesterday.
Najib keeps coming up with stuff like 1Malaysia, GTP, NEM. What does Pakatan have to offer? If they have their own policies and programmes already, why don’t they implement them straight away to help the people? Do they even have a shadow Cabinet? What is their shadow Budget? How can the state governments they run perform even better?
Having lost the battle for Hulu Selangor, Pakatan has to gear up for the war: the next general election. The support it obtained in Hulu Selangor is certainly not measly, and Pakatan should be heartened by it.
The road to Change is long and winding, but the work must begin now. When the general election comes around, I hope I won’t be disappointed, as I was in Hulu Selangor.
Dramatist and journalist Kee Thuan Chye is the author of 'March 8: The Day Malaysia Woke Up'
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