JUNE 28 ― I once witnessed a masterclass in “negotiating” displayed by a 12-year old.

He asked his parents if the family could visit Singapore during the holidays. He marshalled an impressive case by finding the cheapest flights, the most affordable hotel, estimated the food budget and so on.

His dad objected to the trip, so there was a 20-minute back-and-forth, with the parents getting more and more exasperated.

Then, just when the parents were about to explode, the kid said, “Ok, how about we just go to Port Dickson instead?” The parents readily agreed.

I then overheard the boy whisper to his cousin, “Actually my plan was to go PD all along… that Singapore thing was tipu punya.”

Game, set, match 12-year-old.

Trump’s 'zero tolerance' policy along the border

Last week the world was red hot with fury over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” approach towards illegal immigration. News stories were awash with reports of children being separated from their parents who, because they entered the United States illegally, had been arrested and prosecuted ([1]).

It appears that the Trump administration was caught in a catch-22. How can Trump significantly lower the number of illegal immigrants stealing into the States (of which there can be between 15 to 66 thousand per month) without implementing either harsher laws or tougher enforcement, both of which his opponents seem to refuse?

Given that this was one of his key election promises, Trump couldn’t simply ignore it. However, because to do so effectively logically required a tougher stance, a backlash was almost guaranteed.

So what did Trump do? My wild guess: He did what the 12-year-old kid above did. He asked for “Singapore” when all he wanted was “Port Dickson.”

First, he went for “zero-tolerance” which is the toughest stance a POTUS can take within the existing laws, short of executing illegal immigrants on sight.

Then he waited for the backlash, which duly occurred. Then he signed an Executive Order which achieved a few things 1) remove the problem of families being separated whilst 2) maintaining a higher level of enforcement than the previous one during the Obama administration ([2]).

Before June 20th, the “zero tolerance” policy meant that all illegal adult immigrants were prosecuted which led to children being separated from their parents; after that date, the adults are still prosecuted but families will not be separated ([3]).

His critics can complain all they like, but have you noticed that after last Wednesday the media hype has died down somewhat?

Even I feel a little “old” writing this piece. Maybe it’s because when you’ve been given what you ask for, “everybody knows” that if you still complain about the same thing, then something’s not right.

To repeat, last week the whole universe screamed about kids being separated from their families. Then Trump “caved” to pressure by signing something which officially registers his desire that kids not be separated from their families ― so what can people protest about now, which doesn’t expose some obvious goal-post shifting? ([4])

It’s like when an employee complains long and loud that he didn’t get his bonus, and now he’s given his bonus but in instalments. Are people going to care anymore about his rants?

Mahathir’s long games?

Our PM and Trump have something in common i.e. they both appear to be masters of the long game. Recall when Tun first took up the Education portfolio, and Malaysians opposed it because that went against his promises? Then soon after he dropped the post and gave it to Maszlee Malik instead?

That was the long game.

Tun knew that the candidate he had in mind was an Islamic theologian with Salafist leanings. To nominate an education minister with such a profile would surely raise eye-brows (if not fists and voices).

Basically, if he had proposed Maszlee’s name at first, the protest would be greater than it was. But because he took up the portfolio first then later gave it up, it became rather inappropriate for his critics to continue challenging Maszlee’s appointment.

Whatever happens, Tun can’t lose.

Sure, Lim Guan Eng (and others) say that Mahathir “forgot” about the original Pakatan Harapan promise that the PM won’t hold another portfolio. But do you really believe that? Tun M can remember the complicated details involving the appointment of a Malaysian PM, but he “forgot” about the dual portfolio thing? C’mon…

To use a kid analogy again, it’s like if your daughter wants RM5 (for whatever reason), but she initially asks you for RM10. You and her fight like mad and she finally “concedes” and agrees to take only RM5 ― which was her initial plan all along.

There is a unspoken strategy, one which (of course) can always be plausibly denied i.e. the long game.

The moral of the story is: Anytime you see an overtly “harsh” decision, try to consider the possibility that there’s a longer-term plan in play. Even if this doesn’t temper our demand that our leaders adhere to our values at every waking moment, at least it may help us see the bigger picture.

[1]: Some brief Googling will reveal that many illegal immigrants bring along children either as “bargaining chips” or for child-trafficking; this unpleasant situation will not stop if the US Department of Homeland Security takes a lax attitude towards illegal immigration.

[2]: You don’t have to be a “Trump supporter” to realise that the previous administration deported many illegal immigrants and they also separated kids from families on more than a few occasions and, under Obama’s watch, not every child who crossed the border were put up in The Hilton, okay? Why there was no outcry before 2018 is, well, anybody’s guess.

[3]: Unfortunately, now the problems revolve around how long these families should be detained, how long the children can be held under detention (according to a law called the Flores Agreement, children can’t be detained by the government longer than 20 days) and whether or not the government has sufficient shelters to hold all these families together.

[4]: If I’m not mistaken, the present Democrat demand ranges from a) don’t detain families at all to b) naturalise all illegal immigrants. I’m like, why not just remove the border?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.