Campaign with threats instead of persuasion

In the runup to any election, especially a political election like a general or state election, the candidates would normally offer their party manifestos, policies, promises, pork barrelling (sorry, I mean 'sausage' barrelling, wakakaka) and sundry bullshit to entice your votes.

We have seen such manmanlai snake-oil sales talk for decades on ends ever since we have had our first general election in 1955, two years prior to Merdeka and the formation of our nation as a unified sovereign state.

But there's a new ball game in town. UMNO Youth Deputy Chief Khairul Azwan decided that, rather than persuade or sweet-talk voters, he would resort to an UMNO Youth time-honoured tactic of threats, to wit, threatening Chinese Malaysian voters, perhaps a la Mussolini, wakakaka.

Khairul Azwan must be aware, as most Malaysians are, that the majority of Chinese Malaysian voters (with the definite exceptions of Liow Tiong Lai, Mah Siew Keong and Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, wakakaka) have flocked to the Pakatan banner, mainly DAP, so he warned Chinese voters of a possible backlash if they continued to shun BN.

FMT reported: Khairul said this might result in Putrajaya being pressured to give less attention to Chinese vernacular schools or abolish such institutions completely.

Abolishing Chinese vernacular schools has recently become one of the most strident calls of UMNO Youth and other ultra Malay conservative groups.

They didn't realize that Chinese vernacular schools become popular and now virtually a central pillar of Chinese Malaysian culture and probably in some Chinese minds, their last hope for their children to escape poverty and educational discrimination, precisely because of UMNO ministers' f**kup for the last 50 years of playing intra-party political football with our once-mighty education system, a shining beacon to students from neighbouring countries like Thailand and Indonesia.

UMNO Education Ministers ranging from Maddy, Manmanlai, Ah Jib Gor etc, but especially the educational ministers in the earlier 30 years, messed around with a once-great education system to such an extent our educational standards were so drastically lowered it drove/compelled Chinese parents to send their children to the only safe alternative for those children's education, the Chinese vernacular schools.

Anyway, without delving into and dwelling on a topic which I have already blogged on many times, UMNO Youth Deputy Chief Khairul Azwan has now threatened Chinese voters with the abolishment of Chinese vernacular education, without realizing Ah Jib Gor has just pledged his support for Chinese schools to be maintained at the 63rd MCA general meeting.

So Leong Kim Soon, Khairul's counterpart in MCA Youth. has been hopping mad at Khairul's intimidating words, more because his task of winning back some Chinese support will now be made difficult.

But this is the peril of BN coalition politics where sections of UMNO would frequently ignore the ethnic and cultural sensitivities of MCA and MIC to issue statements and/or policies to promote themselves but which militate against Chinese or Indian interests, and then those so-called moronic UMNO allies wonder why the MCA and MICs are not supporting UMNO 101%, wakakaka.

I wonder whether Pakatan coalition politics would ever become the same, as in the terrible example of PKR obdurately supporting PAS for its own interests but against the wishes of DAP and Amanah?