I wrote this on one of UMNO forums today, in light of the massive defeat of the BN in the 12th General Elections:
For the first time in most our our lives, we are now an Opposition in what we have always believed to be “our safe state.” PJ Utara is now dominated by the Opposition…and even the MCA giant like Chew Mei Fun has crumbled. At 4pm when I went to SS2, I met Chew Mei Fun’s polling agent, Stevie Ho Leh Jan, who is a personal friend of mine, at the voting center, and he told me only 15.9% had turned out a at 2pm. My original reading nationally was 46% for BN, 16% for the Opposition, and 38% undecided. When the turnout figure changed drastically between 3pm to 5pm, I knew that the silent 38% were out to speak out with deafening silence.
In many areas, the BK5 process failed, our perayu undi failed, our K10 failed – we did not do our work properly, and we were eager to show good results and process to the former MB, just to please him, but failed to read the underlying current. We became complacent and hardly went out to woo voters thinking, “It’s an MCA seat, so we don’t have to work so hard.” As Chaucer would have said, “Padan dengan muka. (serves you right)”
Looking at the results of the whole nation’s elections process, I belive PKR has only made it because it has this pact with the DAP. The DAP is the real champ in this sense. The BN = Barang Naik war cry of the PKR only appeals to the urban malays and less-informed chinese; it was more the DAP’s “Let’s vote for change” and “A vote for MCA is a vote for UMNO” banners that made the impact.
We hit back in Penang and said that “A vote for DAP is a vote for PAS”; so the chinese stayed away from voting PAS but gave DAP and PKR their vote.
Sad to say, but as what I have been saying all along, political chauvinism is NOT the way to win votes. Going back to the issue of Klang Municipal councillors from the MCA refusing to wear the exhorbitantly expensive robes for meetings, or the RM2K baju melayu/baju kurung; and the state UMNO’s reaction, ws the start to it all. All this I have written here 4-5 years ago, but went unheeded. We always speak of “Ketuanan Melayu”: that other races have no right to question us and that our rights should be respected; but we always forget the fact that respect is to be earned and commanded; respect cannot be demanded or forced upon. The chinese, too, pay taxes as we do, and deserve the same rights and privileges that we malays enjoy.
The non-malays post May-1969 may understand the need to address socio-economic gaps, but 40 years on, again as I have mentioned several times here and during meetings, that we malays should learn to do away with being spoon-fed, and do away with inequalities in our policies. There are certain aspects that can be protected, but in the end it is always we ourselves that complain about the malays Ali Baba-ing contracts out to the chinese. And we always fail to point to ourselves of our incompetencies, because of our chauvinistic attitude.
We say that we, as Muslims, earn the right to buikd osques and suraus everywhere, and allow the Christians to build churches in a housing area only if the housing area is of a certain acreage; but our developers will always circumvent this requirement by developing housing areas that have less acreage, leaving the Christians with no choice but to rent shoplots and convert them into small assemblies. How Islamic is that when Muhammad (pbuh) himself decreed that Muslim soldiers, after facing the Romans, should help rebuild and repair damaged churches in areas held by the Muslims?
We claim to have a coalition with our non-malay partners; but what we actually have is a coalition where we tell each other, “You do what you want to do and do not step on us, but we have the right to step all over you.” Can you blame the chinese for rejecting the MCA and GERAKAN for this?
Last year, I was called back from semi-retirement to help out in Ijok where, although is a malay majority area, the Indian community call the shots. We parachuted in an Indian candidate to defend the seat against PKR’s malay. The Indians were in the unenviable position of being politically-marginalised both by the local MIC, and also by the other community members. The malays however, did not want to see another Indian candidate. I had to go from house to house to address grouses, versus the original plan of asking me to give ceramahs. I was glad that Saudara Asrul, with the blessing of Saudara Azli, with a few more members of the Pemuda UMNO PJU, could help me, learnt the ropes, and conducted the same process on their own having watched me on two occassions.
We won Ijok. And because we felt safe, and complacent, and because someone agreed to let a friend run for elections there, decided to remove the Indian representative there back to Kuala Selangor and put a malay in an already divided malay community; and failed to read the situation in the field. No thanks to, again, our political-chauvinism that caused the HINDRAF to react, the Hindus felt they have been taken for a ride when they had to give up their MIC seat to UMNO, and decided to vote against the BN. You can look at the figures and see for yourself that it was the Indian votes, coupled with the anti-UMNO malays, and the chinese who voted for change, that caused the demise of BN in Ijok.
UMNO will have to wake up. The malays can no longer think that they own this land. Around 70 percent of the current voters were all Malaysian-born, and do not remember what May 1969 was all about. They can no longer be swayed by the appearance of steamrollers and hard-working JKR contractors tarring the roads and so on. The malays will have to have a retrospection and see where they now stand after 40 years of being spoon-fed like spastics.
If UMNO wants to remain relevant, it should stop fighting only for the cause of the malays. Maybe Dato’ Onn Jaafar’s original idea of forming UMNO was right – it was meant to be a party for all races.
But chauvinism almost killed it.
SeaDemon Says 