KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — Umno’s decision to burnish its Islamic credentials at a time Malaysians are grappling with more material concerns will cause Barisan Nasional (BN) to continue losing popularity, according to Singapore’s The Straits Times.
In an opinion piece titled “Playing Islam card won’t help Umno” published today, the Singapore daily pointed out that the Islamisation of the Malay nationalist party was happening even though religion had not been a key topic in Election 2013.
Instead, the newspaper noted that it was corruption and financial mismanagement that had turned off the more educated urban voters and caused BN to lose the popular vote for the first time since 1969, when it had last contested as the Alliance Party.
“Umno’s current focus on Islam and its potential threats is almost ironic as its respect for the religion was never an electoral issue.
“Instead, it was the public perception of corruption and wastage in government that alienated the relatively more educated urban voters from BN. Indeed, that perception cut across the racial divide,” the newspaper said.
The ST pointed out that at least one Cabinet member appeared to be aware that this was the case, quoting Youth and Sports Minister and Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin as saying that BN’s weaker performance in Election 2013 was due to real-world issues.
“I call it the three ‘Cs’: corruption, the cost of living, and crime,” Khairy was quoted as saying in the article.
But it also said this perception did not appear to be shared in the rest of the party.
In recent months, Umno has stepped up efforts to portray itself as defenders of Islam and to beat Islamist rivals PAS in a religious auction for the Malay-Muslim vote.
In the controversial Muslim-Christian tug of war over the Arabic word for God, “Allah”, Umno continues to maintain that the phrase was exclusive to Islam.
Umno has also sought to stamp out the Shiah denomination of Islam while linking PAS leaders to the now-banned movement, leading observers to surmise political motives in the manoeuvre.
But Umno officials maintain that the crackdown was only intended to contain those radicalised during their time in the Middle East.
“What we are worried about are those ordinary Malays who go abroad to study in places like Iran and Syria. They come back filled with Shi’ite zeal and they try to convert other Malays here. That is what we are against,” one Umno insider told The Business Times, a sister publication to the ST.
But the ST predicted that efforts to tout its Islamic credentials were unlikely to bear fruit for Umno, saying it was simply an attempt to avoid addressing the issues that mattered to voters during Election 2013 and will become increasingly so in the face of rising cost of living.
“Next year will go down as the Year of Living Expensively as the cost of living will accelerate. From Jan 1, electricity rates, toll rates and petrol prices will go up. That is almost guaranteed to make the BN quite unpopular,” the ST said.
Since September, Malaysians have been hit with repeated price hikes and announcements of new and higher taxes, leading to growing outrage over the rapid-hire increases during a period when wage-earners were already struggling with spiralling property costs and inflation.
The newspaper further warned that failure or refusal to face up to these issues could mean “disaster” for the BN administration in the next general election.
BN won Election 2013 with a weaker mandate, taking 133 from the 222 seats in Parliament. This was down from the 140 it had won in 2008.
