AUGUST 6 — I’ve been walking around disoriented these past days. Mostly in traipses to rid persistent cliches chucked into conversations online and in-person about the Negeri Sembilan election, which ostensibly rolls into Johor before landing flat in last year’s Sabah polls. 

Al, a very old friend from a far more innocent time, told me that perhaps I assume too much about what people need. 

People by large are perfectly comfortable in the equations they hold even if those suppositions do not pass muster under scrutiny. 

Which was a clarion call. I had to break it down to the basics. 

It’s not that the “self-declared” progressives lost so comprehensively the past month.

It was the air of inevitability leading to the result. That nothing was going to avert the obvious. 

Where do we begin this then, this autopsy?

DAP are staring down the barrel

They have a congress on August 16 but it’s a bit pointless. The make-up of the delegation already presupposes the outcome. 

They want to determine Pakatan Harapan’s efficacy to their cause when they have an existential crisis at hand. Talk about deciding how to decorate the home to impress disgruntled neighbours when the house is on fire.  

BN has, mostly utilising the power of incumbency, throughout 60 years marked DAP via its leadership of Chinese communalism as a threat to the Malay community.

Was it unfair? Grossly. But that’s how the cards were handed out. 

The party was blessed with a buffer period, between 2007 through its participation in Bersih through to early stages of the Madani government, say 2024, to reinvent itself. 

It falsely assumed, the second time in government was vindication of its strategy. To stubbornly hold on to Chinese support by being Chinese first, and gather a sliver of votes from Malay-based partners, to prevail. 

The past 15 years, the successes, were supposed to be political cover as the party Malaysianised. It never did. It is a Chinese-first party, which is why it will lose handsomely in the general election but stay clear of losing its deposit — there’ll always be 12.5 per cent communal votes. 

Their separate but equal pillar, they never realised, can boomerang back. Perikatan Nasional minus Bersatu and Barisan Nasional – with the inconsequential MCA and MIC – play the same game. Communalism first. 

How DAP wasted the gift of 15 years.

To bring Hew Kuan Yau or Superman Hew to campaign in Negeri Sembilan. Ten years after he voluntarily stepped out of DAP for his divisive communal politics, he continues to campaign for the party. Certainly cherished by the party. 

Park and picnic on a railway track, even the late KTM Komuter can kill you.

PN-BN worked a formula out

The rumblings about the Negeri Sembilan exco numbers and choice of mentri besar in less than transparent fashion does not reduce one principle adhered to by all participants — communalism before differences. 

This was in the kitchen awhile before it got to the dinner table.

In September 2023, Mahathir Mohamad became PAS’ advisor. He abandoned the Pejuang and Pergerakan Tanah Air coalition, which crashed and burned along with him at the general election in November 2022. 

It would be unsurprising to find out his fingerprints are present on the blueprint in play. More so convinced to learn that Pejuang was co-opted into PN together with the expected entry of Hamzah Zainudin’s Parti Wawasan Negara.

Wawasan stayed out of Johor in order to avoid unnecessary rifts, and entered the fray once Bersatu’s fate was sealed in Johor. 

Pejuang did not want to underperform and stayed out of Negeri Sembilan. You can bet your last ringgit Pejuang will be in the PN candidate list for Melaka. 

The formula is overly plain.

There is enough power to share among those committed to the movement is the core message.

But always, always, sort out DAP and its hangaround Pakatan before dividing the spoils among current partners inside the new grand coalition.

The message’s consistency is aided by the message’s simplicity.  

Is it wrong, communalism?

My answer is my life’s work. However, I’m negligible. 

Thirty-four million Malaysians, twenty-one million of them voters, get to decide the country’s path.

In these past two state elections, they have delivered clear verdicts.

Democracy proponents cannot decry the people’s democratic choices, however they arrive at their opinions. It is theirs to hold as is the vote to cast. 

Yet, people who celebrate majoritarianism ought to be careful. All those in the majority, will belatedly realise their more personal issues or beliefs are constantly in the minority. Nations are groups of minorities misled to believe most people agree with them on most things. 

But the larger failing, as a nation, is if communalism dominates who do we blame?

Both sides, definitely. Yet, the demographic realities press the need to change harder on one side. The other side only wins. 

Wait out the storm

This appears to be the only strategy from PKR which chairs Pakatan. 

Which is indistinguishable from DAP’s “work harder with the same principles” strategy. 

Something has to give. Or all of them can prepare for life out of power. 

It might shock but a sizeable number of voters edging to PN-BN presently do not subscribe to the conservative slant of the leaders. They nevertheless think most leaders on both sides are far removed from them.

But as I mentioned, one side has a super-clear value proposition, and the other waits.  

They are borderline to commit the cardinal sin of elections, to wait for the pendulum to swing back. It may gravitate back as a guillotine to end the misery of the serial losers’ necks.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.