Time for BN to think out of the box

It cannot escape the people that the world is moving into a new, borderless reality, even if their political parties choose to harp on parochial issues that have slipped into the past. If BN is serious about staying relevant, it must go with the new flow. The race card is not working any more.

 By Oon Yeoh and R B Bhattacharjee   

The political establishment in the country is caught in a trap. Most of its members have been singing the communal tune since the day their parties were born. When their influence is threatened, the instinctive reaction is to raise the temperature a notch or two by appealing to the ethnic loyalties of the communities they represent. By taking extreme positions on communal rights, usually expressed by their firebrand youth leaders, they hope to pull together the loosening strands of support among their voter base.

After five decades of Independence, however, the communities they represent have grown increasingly blasé about ethnic concoctions, and such scare-mongering has begun to yield diminishing returns. In addition, long years in power have allowed complacency to become entrenched among members of the ruling coaltion. So, even when a steady stream of excesses and abuse of power has surfaced, the will to clean up their political organisations has been less than forthcoming.

As a result, the voters have begun to express their unhappiness with the status quo, most tellingly in the 12 th general election (GE12) on March 8, 2008. Unsurprisingly, the component parties of the Barisan Nasional (BN) now feel like the voters — especially the non-Malays — have abandoned them in droves.

In particular, the leaders of the MCA, MIC and Gerakan have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong and what they can do to win back support.

Trouble is, it is difficult for the incumbents to wean themselves of their self-deluding rhetoric. At first, it was the denial syndrome. No, the voters did not vote for Pakatan Rakyat (PR), they said. They were voting against the BN. Cold comfort that is.

Further, the aftermath of GE12 has not been kind on the BN. There have been seven by-elections in the peninsula since that fateful general election and PR has won each one. The trend has generally been the same, with the Malay vote roughly split and the non-Malay vote overwhelmingly in favour of PR.

By now, one would expect the BN coalition members to realise that a key factor behind their lack of oomph is that they are seen as out of touch with the new national mood that is more outward looking, entrepreneurial and constructive than introverted, conservative and divisive.

It cannot escape the people that the world is moving into a new, borderless reality, even if their political parties choose to harp on parochial issues that have slipped into the past. It BN is serious about staying relevant, it must go with the new flow. The race card is not working any more.

So, what can BN do to shore up support? In the long run, it has to actually meld the parties into one big multiracial entity. But before that can happen, much effort must be spent on preparing its members to look beyond race and religious identity. That can best be achieved in an inter-generational time frame.

In the medium term, the BN spirit of consensus can be invoked to give the coalition a new sense of purpose and lease of life – one that is based on consultation and cooperation rather than hegemony and hierarchy. The 64 Thousand Dollar question is: Can the BN change itself in time?