The Morning After - Part 1

Najib has finally got his 'mandate', though from PKR's view, under dodgy circumstances, wakakaka.

A shocked and by now broken hearted Anwar Ibrahim has cried foul as reported by TMI's Crying foul, Anwar disputes GE13 results and will not accept those damning election results.

It's also interesting to note than Pakatan has actually won the popular vote by amassing about 51% share of the total votes for GE-13 but been rewarded with only 40% share of federal seats, whilst BN with 47% of total votes garnered 60% of the 222 federal seats. Only once before in Malaysia's political history has a party with the majority of federal seats lost the popular vote, to wit, in 1969.

But this is a result of a combination of 'first past the post' contest combined with gross gerrymandering where in one federal constituency, only 15,000 registered voters can elect a MP to represent them in parliament while in another constituency, nearly 150,000 voters may only vote for also one MP to represent them. The voter in the former has ten times the say in parliament compared to his/her sardine-zed fellow Malaysian in the latter, who is perhaps a 'lesser' Malaysian.

The job of a truly independent impartial Election Commission, which of course doesn't describe the Malaysian EC, would have endeavoured to ensure the universal suffrage of 'one person, one vote' in a democracy, thus dividing the 222 federal constituencies into lots having an average of, say, 60,000 voters in each [some minor variations may be allowed but subject to justifications, etc].

Kapar would then be divided into Kapar East (or North) and Kapar West (or South) represented by 2 MPs while Putrajaya doesn't deserve to be be a federal seat by itself and would be subsumed under another Wilayah constituency or combined with Labuan as one.

But that's only a pipe dream as the ruling party will never allow such impartial professionalism to come about for the EC. Let me share a very closed secret with you - the EC is in fact UMNO's real fixed deposit, not just some pro-UMNO states.

Nonetheless, I would say, notwithstanding suspicions of UMNO's alleged 'creativity' with the alleged help of the EC, Najib has done well not to let the BN lose and, what more, also in regaining BN's control of Kedah and retaining rule in the Silver State, the latter very much to my surprise!

It's a truism of politics that political parties lose elections, not win them.

While Najib was assisted by the master strategist and tactician, his mentor Dr Mahathir, in not losing the votes of the Heartland, he wasted precious federal seats in overindulging the extreme right-wing element of his party by allowing two losers in Zulkuifli Noordin and Ibrahim Ali to contest.

Ibrahim Ali was undoubtedly a concession to his mentor, but I wonder for the life of me why he had chosen Zulkifli Noordin, an automatic loser from the moment the religious bigot was nominated.

Then he compounded his mistake by marginalizing Ong Tee Keat just on the words of a loser like Chua Soi Lek, a MCA man who lacked objectivity, impartiality and coalition interests insofar as his intra-party chief political enemy is concerned.

Najib was lucky not to lose despite wasting the 3 potentially winnable federal seats of Pasir Mas, Shah Alam and Pandan.

But f* gerrymandering and the popular vote because big business are elated with the BN victory. As TMI reported in its As results sink in, big winners are KL tycoons and Lynas as stocks rally:

Stocks surged as much as 6.8 per cent this morning and the ringgit jumped to a 10-month high, after Barisan Nasional (BN) extended its 56-year rule and fended off a strong opposition challenge that had unnerved investors.

The benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index rose to a lifetime high of 1,808.90 by 9.02am in response to yesterday's general election, with stocks linked to the coalition and its favoured tycoons gaining handsomely, Reuters reported this morning.

Kowtim-ness has been preserved, wakakaka!

Ironically, in the midst of big business breaking open bottles of Dom Perignon, the biggest loser has been MCA, proving a point I made in another post that most Chinese business concerns have been bypassing MCA as they deem the Chinese political party as pretty useless in influencing the UMNO-led government on business and contracts.

And of course to some extent, a fellow loser to MCA is PAS, both of whom merit very little sympathy.

MCA has come to this nadir in its political life, again if I may add but worse than ever before, because of its own choosing. It's a bloody miracle it managed to secure 6 parliamentary seats when it could have lost both Labis and Bentong as well.

Be that as it may, Chua Soi Lek should not have indulged in merajuk-ing (sulking) fashion in attributing the disaster for his party into a disgraceful racial parting shot at its political nemesis, the DAP. It's not just sour grapes but poisonous langsat - indicating a bloody vindictive bangsat mindset.

The reason why MCA has lost so badly has been its reluctance to stand up for the community it claims to represent. As the post-election editorial in The Malaysian Insider said, MCA might as well dropped off the 'C' in its name. And MCA must suck on that!

MCA had believed it could continue to depend on the historically political passivity of the Chinese in Malaya-Malaysia for it to play an equally passive (and crumbs-begging cringing) role in the BN coalition, for the promotion and interests of its most influential lobby group, its crony the Chinese business towkays.

It failed and perhaps still fails to recognize that there is a new generation of Chinese Malaysians who aren't so beholden to the overseas Chinese doctrine of lying (politically) low and quietly working for the traditional 3 bowls of rice.

These new Chinese generation consider themselves first and foremost as Malaysians rather than Chinese and thus want a say in the affairs of this nation, as citizens of their own land. They resent being treated as pendatangs, but they resent even more an MCA which did nothing to prevent the humiliation of their classification as lesser Malaysians.

Needless to say, the new generation Chinese identifying themselves as Malaysians are loud, with some even vicious, vile and venomous, but that's the inevitable outcome of their pent-up feelings, right or wrong or somewhere in-between, of being humiliated, scorned and sneeringly dismissed for decades as pendatangs (thus lesser creatures) and even children of prostitutes.

Unless MCA changes to meet the expectation of the new generation of Malaysians, the party will through its political irrelevance become extinct when the weakening inertia of old loyalties to the Chinese-based party finally comes to a halt.

Yes, MCA lost the election to DAP. DAP did not win from them. And the most striking example of this was when Chua Soi Lek turned tail from meeting Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah and surrendered that MCA seat to UMNO as it had surrendered other seats to UMNO, Gerakan and even PPP. MCA had lost the elections way before 05 May 2013.

PAS!

There was so much promise in PAS, with the Erdogens showing the softer and more palatable welfare-oriented nature of Islam to a previously suspicious non-Muslims. But alas, the ulama camp within the party couldn't contain their true selves (their real colour) as they sensed overwhelming victory in GE-13, a sense that eventually proved to be incorrect as they forgot that the non-Muslim support was conditional on that softer side of Islamic governance.

They reverted to their passionate obsession with hudud which implementation even within the Muslim World is still being debated, but nevertheless insisted on its legislative implementation in Malaysia's multi-racial multi-religious secular democratic political system. Almost everyday we heard ad nausem of their hudud mantra.

PAS' interpreted Islamic values had also, by its intrusive interference in non-Muslim day-to-day affairs, given cause to many of its erstwhile non-Muslim friends to reconsider continuance of their support for a party which seems to have broken its promise of not applying Islamic laws, values and policies on non-Muslims.

In fact there were already more than adequate warning indications in Kedah of non-Muslim dislike, disgust and disappointment way way back but, alas, PAS unrepentantly continued along its arrogant way.

Many have also been shocked by its thuggish behaviour during the last few days of campaign before the election when its members aggressively confronted both PKR and PSM candidates over disputes in seat allocations such as in Sungai Acheh and Kota Damansara, etc. PAS had then frightened many non-Muslims and pissed off some Muslims by its members' feral behaviour. The non-Muslims' thoughts were "If they are like so now, good lord, what will they be like when they're in government?"

Again I stated that the truism in politics, applicable to both PAS and MCA, is that political parties lose an election, not win it. And that's why PAS lost Kedah and MCA several of its seats. People voted them out, a process which by default has benefited respectively UMNO and DAP (and to some extent, PKR).

Unfortunately for us, Mat Sabu became collateral damage.

As for a few BN losses especially in Johor, the state's former MB, Abdul Ghani Othman, should be conscious of this rather than blamed his and BN's losses on the 'irrationality of voters' (he meant Chinese voters) for voting based on emotions. He stated "Voting with emotion has caused polarisation to occur in Johor, especially in urban areas as shown in the results of 13th polls."

And this has been from a man who in late 2006, a mere 6.5 years ago, rejected the concept of Bangsa Malaysia as totally unacceptable because he stated publicly that a national unified identity was a threat to his cherished Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy).

He even dismissed the Bangsa Malaysia notion as fostering a rojak of races in the country, presumably seeing it as a bastardized mélange by contrast to the superiority of unadulterated Malay race.

He would only grudgingly allow use of the Bangsa Malaysia term provided it was only applied with the Malays as the pivotal race of the peoples of Malaysia - essentially upholding the non-negotiability of Ketuanan Melayu and its Aryan-like concept of Malay supremacy. Thus to him, there could be a Bangsa Malaysia and a bangsa malaysia, with the former capitalised to indicate his pivotal race while the latter in lower case would be the 'nons'.

And he has the brazen nerve to pompously preached to us about polarization in Johor?

MIC!

Yes, MIC has in (relative) comparison to MCA done well, even though in two of the four seats it now holds, it scrapped through by a mere few hundred votes in each. But a win is a win, even if by one vote.

It's obvious many members of the Indian community still respect and support MIC, despite the party's known lack of care for its Indian constituency. But that would be their democratic choice.

Indians also enjoy the unique position, within the Malaysian context and thus to Malays, of appearing less threatening than the economically aggressive Chinese. Of course on the same token, Indians have suffered and may possibly still suffer at the hands of the authority more than Chinese. But that's for their community leaders to weigh and balance in the totality of their socio-economic-cultural-political situation  and work out, wakakaka, a blueprint.

To be continued .....

See the 2nd part of this post The Morning After - Part 2 published evening of 07 May 2013.