Pota vote: A mirror to Malaysia’s political dysfunction

By admin-s Last updated Apr 9, 2015

In this situation through twisted logic many are saying that the side who is not wholeheartedly opposed to a putrid law are worse than the side wholeheartedly in support of the putrid law.

Praba Ganesan, MMO

“No wonder people would rather stick with the current corrupt batch of idiots instead of voting in new idiots.”

A fellow columnist summed it up. I disagree, not necessarily with her, but with the observation that Malaysians find no value in dumping the “idiots” they have now.

I’m conceding that she is entitled to assign all politicians of all hue in this country as idiots, many of my countrymen will agree with her — a country mile more that those who agree with me.

However, I am convinced the Pota (Prevention of Terrorism Bill, soon to be signed officially as an Act) voting drama on April 6 (till the early hours of April 7), 2015 reveals even more tellingly about the dysfunction in this country’s prevailing political discourse.

As witnessed in another columnist’s quip “Simply put, Pakatan Rakyat let 57 per cent of Malaysians down that night.”

He’s probably referring to the all too overly abused statistic that 52, not 57, per cent of the electorate did not vote for Barisan Nasional (BN) in the general election in 2013.

But I must ask, if those who failed to show up to oppose a nasty law have let down more than half the country down, how much letting down have those who actively voted for the Bill managed?

And if the blame has to be apportioned along numbers then since 60 MPs did show up of the 80 plus Opposition lawmakers possible, did they only let down roughly 16 per cent of the country?

And the 100 per cent BN support for the Bill is that just completely negligible?

As you can see, it’s turning out to be retarded.

Pakatan has failed, has it?

While I have previously worked for one of Pakatan Rakyat’s parties before, and therefore interacted closely with cadres across the coalition’s universe, I am not their favourite guy presently.

From excoriating Pakatan’s lack of messaging and prioritisation; berating the Penang chief minister’s alleged disrespect to Malaysian universities and DAP’s visceral absence of spine to dissect honestly vernacular education; rebuking Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) for not embracing new politics in candidate selection for Permatang Pauh while Anwar languishes in prison; pummelling hudud’s incompatibility with the Constitution along with PAS’ complicity; to chastising Pakatan’s vote stumping strategy, I have been on their case — not fighting their case.

And that’s just this year. Safe to say, I won’t be on their Raya holiday cards mailing list.

But the animosity against Pakatan because BN has managed to pass a Bill it authored is just wrong, whichever way it is looked at. Many risk becoming just another farm member blaming Snowball.

Amazingly there are people arguing that BN should stay in power over the Pota vote because Pakatan is not efficient, effective, ruthless, calculated, organised or something else enough to stop BN from passing bad laws which BN will enforce, and presumably benefit from.

I worry about reasoning like that, as much as I am suspicious of those saying they are all the same idiots and nothing ever changes, which means passively accepting those who are in power right now, ought to always be in power.

Which in turn forces a permanent frustration cycle if put in how the author phrases where one set of “idiots” get the cookies, and your cookies, and another set of “idiots” remain infuriating you and can’t get your cookies back for you.

Similar to say, there is a bunch of thugs threatening to beat you and your family up in your own house, and only guys outside across the street — well, most of them — want to come and help you.

Mind you, the guys across the street are always outnumbered by the thugs even if half your household prefers the guys across the street rather than the thugs.

So the possible help, which was always numerically inferior because the thugs can always call more macais (hired hands) to join them, is deplorable to you because not all of them want to help you, or they are always going to lose in trying to defend you?