DEC 6 — MMN, according to Ooi Kok Hin, a research scholar at Waseda University, stands for Malay Muslim Nationalism. Quoting Wong Chin Huat, a political scientist cum colleague at The Penang Institute, Ooi argued that "MMN” will define the future general elections of Malaysia—starting from the next one in 2023.

In MMN, Malays and Muslims and their nationalism will gel into one template. As and when they do, other ethnic groups across the lay of the land in Malaysia, will either inch towards MMN—out of fear for it—or keep a safe distance from it, again, out of fear too.

This is where the analytical logic of Ooi, and Wong, begins to break down. How? First and foremost, the belief that MMN can only trigger fear is nothing but a bogey or straw-man. If the political strategies and beliefs of Liew Chin Tong in the Democratic Action Party (DAP) is taken as a benchmark, DAP believes in "Middle Malaysia”; as much as Bersatu, Amanah or Parti KeAdilan Party do.

In the recent 2018 general election, for example, Chin Tong has repeatedly pointed out that DAP fielded "more Malay candidates (in DAP) under the age of 40,” as opposed to UMNO or PAS. Now, this is where it gets interesting: while DAP was willing to field more and more Malay candidates, it means MMN is not real. Rather it is something which even DAP, a socialist centrist party, can co-opt into their own.

Secondly, no one knows how deeply does DAP believe in the "Middle Malaysia”. So far, Chin Tong appears to be the only chief party strategist who advocates it fervently. But the likes of Lim Guan Eng, now the Finance Minister, has affirmed that he sees himself as "a Malaysian first” not an ethnic Chinese or for that matter Malaysian Chinese. When he said it, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed was there, as was Mohamad Sabu, president of Amanah and other stalwarts in PKR. All agreed the "New Malaysia” was all about Malaysia first.

Thirdly, while Ooi Kok Hin and many other Malaysian studies specialists, such as Edmund Terence Gomez at University of Malaya, tend to bemoan the existence of a slew of legislations, such as Act 153, that defend the racial and special privileges of the Malay rulers and Bumiputeras that extend to Sabah and Sarawak, the market seems to know that these systems of special rights and privileges do often exist all but in name only. Over the last nine months alone, since the historic May 9 2018 general election, the foreign direct investments (FDI) that have streamed into the country have reached a respectable RM41 billion ringgit—as opposed to RM 14 billion ringgit in the same corresponding period in 2017. This means the historic electoral win of May 9 2018 has ushered a new found belief in the "New Malaysia” that the democratic coalition of four component parties can work. If there is no faith in the coalition of four, plus it’s strategic alliance with Warisan with Sabah, why would the market respond so positively to the new Malaysia? Thus Ooi Kok Hin and Wong Chin Huat, or anyone who agreed with MMN, are NOT READING the Malay or even Islamic psychology of the Muslims or Bumiputeras accurately, if at all. This is why in this rebuttal, there is no need to even question Ooi Kok Hin’s appropriation of the concept of "consociationalism”.

Fourth, the title of Ooi Kok Hin’s academic article is unfortunately misleading. In erecting MMN as the future epicenter of 2023 election and other general elections of the sort, Ooi Kok Hin was not actually talking about the "end of ethno centric elite rule in Malaysia,” (the captioned quotation marks being the title of the article) but the beginning of MMN as the master narrative that the future elites and electoral participants of Malaysia.

At 222 parliamentary seats, and 587 state seats, there is no doubt that some politicians across both sides of the aisle, whether Pakatan Harapan or Barisan National, will fall into the habits of using MMN as a ruse—it is worth reminding it is a ruse, thus a trick—to guide their electoral machineries. But come 2023, one can be sure that Bersatu alone will not campaign on MMN alone. If Bersatu had wanted to use MMN, it could have used it in the 2018 general election, where the stakes were supremely high, since any potential mistake would have meant Najib using his new mandate in the 14^th general election to squash all opposition elements in Bersatu and Pakatan Harapan. If Ooi Kok Hin and co believed so deeply in the specter of MMN—potentially an indirect manifestation of latent Islamophobia, if only Ooi Kok Hin and co themselves would care to admit it—they should have asked themselves why didn’t Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed use MMN through out the campaign of the 14^th general election? Instead Tun Dr Mahathir and every member in Pakatan Harapan spoke against the corruption and kleptocracy of Najib Razak, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Malaysia, and even by attacking the overt false and pseudo Islamism of PAS. More stunningly of course Pakatan Harapan won, and defeated a grand coalition of 13 parties which was the BN, not merely in Peninsular Malaysia, but Sabah and Sarawak. Truly, the 82 per cent of the Malaysian voters who turned up in May 9 2018 were indeed concerned with issues like good governance, future financial melt down and debt of Malaysia, and of course, the grand larceny of "1MDB”, and what Tun Daim Zainuddin called many "mini 1MDBs”.

Sixth, the Bloomberg Emerging Market Index has listed Malaysia as the number one emerging economy out of a field of more than twenty, all within a spate of six months. Largely this is this to the strong foreign reserves of the Central Bank, at US$101.5 billion which can supply imports up to 7.7 months.

Seventh, where is the explanatory power of MMN in Sabah, a pivotal state in 2023, no least? The Chief Minister of Sabah is of the Bajau descent. Yet Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal was able to win the hearts and minds of Sabahans, including the Kadazans-Malays-Dayaks (KMD). If MMN did not rear its head in Sabah on May 9 2018, then what did? The answer was simple: it was a rehash of the Parti Bersatu Sabah 1984 slogan "Sabah for Sabahans” which Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal and his colleague Darrel Leiking were not afraid to use nor invoke through the whole election campaign. In fact, through out the campaign, the concept of Sabah and Sabahans was sufficiently powerful, that even Tun Dr Mahathir never had to set foot in Sabah to campaign on behalf of Warisan.

All said, MMN can exist, and it is existing in the form of the jingoistic PAS-UMNO alliance. It may even exist in the form for Perkasa rally. Come December 8, even if 1 million PAS, Perkasa and UMNO members, showed up for the anti International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in Kuala Lumpur, the theoretical currency and academic called of MMN would still be missing. Why?

Simple. These are party members, some of which may be paid to attend the event too. But these are not the majority of Malaysians who voted overwhelmingly, rejecting the corruption of Barisan National and UMNO. In fact, as the PKR campaign of Rafizi Ramli showed, it was enough to speak of the importance of returning to the spirit of the Reformasi of 1998. By highlighting the importance of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim as the democratic icon of Malaysia, and the future Prime Minister of Malaysia to succeed Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed, Rafizi Ramli’s own internal PKR campaign was enough to pull within a whisker of a few thousand votes to defeat the incumbent deputy President of PKR Datuk Seri Azmin Ali who is concurrently the Minister of Economic Affairs in the Federal government. The spirit of Reformasi, in other words, is alive and kicking in PKR, and it is once again, an outgrowth and manifestation of the mood of May 9 2018, where nary anyone from Pakatan Harapan used MMN as the opening gambit of their respective campaigns.

Phar Kim Beng, a former visiting scholar at Waseda University, Japan, may have been the first to understand the inner psychology of Malay tsunami by  pointing out in the pages of South China Morning Post in Hong Kong in March 2017 that "crisis like Felda” or other scandals like Tabung Haji were far more important to the Malay and Muslim voters, not MMN.

Ooi Kok Hin and co used MMN as an optic to predict future stability of the grand coalition of Pakatan Harapan. But the lenses are driven by inchoate fear. It must be stated that one should not show such fear of the MMN. One has to be more focused on the issues of good and bad governance, which formed the crucible of a nation wide reaction against the grand corruption of PAS and UMNO.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.