The two tight slaps the voters gave Mahathir

Mahathir turned the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections into a Referendum. He went to the ground to tell the voters if they oppose Najib then vote Pakatan. The voters voted Barisan with an even larger majority than in 2013, essentially giving Mahathir two tight slaps.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

In 1999, when the Malays voted opposition and the Chinese voted government, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad lamented that the Malays are too emotional and feudalistic. “Why can’t the Malays be more like the Chinese who are pragmatic?” said Mahathir.

Actually the Chinese can be even more emotional and even more feudalistic than the Malays but Mahathir does not seem to realise this. Try banning Chinese education and close down Chinese schools and see how emotional the Chinese will get. And the Chinese are very feudal and have not stopped being feudal for 5,000 years, long before the word ‘Malay’ was even invented.

Anyway, in short, what Mahathir is saying is that the Malays are ruled by their hearts while the Chinese are ruled by their heads. And that is why the Malays are emotional (unrealistic) while the Chinese are pragmatic (realistic). Mahathir did not say what rules the Indians or Mamaks though.

So, according to Mahathir, it is good that the Chinese did not emulate the Malays back in 1999 and swing over to the opposition merely because Anwar Ibrahim was beaten up and almost died the night he was arrested — and was left unconscious on the lockup floor and without medical attention until the following morning.

The Malays were outraged about the ‘Mata Lebam’ and voted against Mahathir, which means they voted against Umno and Barisan Nasional. The Chinese I spoke to in the run-up to the November 1999 general election, however, warned me that their community would still be voting government because a strong economy and secured livelihood comes first.

In other words, the Chinese were pragmatic while the Malays allowed their emotions to get the better of them. And this upset Mahathir. Hence the reason he came out with that statement.

Well, in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar yesterday, the Chinese demonstrated, yet again, how pragmatic they can be when they want to. They knew that if they voted for PAN in essence they would be voting for DAP. PAN is merely a front for DAP. So do they want DAP to represent them in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar?

So, yesterday, what happened was that the Chinese rejected DAP. And by rejecting PAN they were rejecting DAP. The Chinese saw what happened to DAP in the recent Sarawak state election and they also realise that the Chinese are significant in only 20% of the 222 Parliament seats all over Malaysia while the Malays/natives are the majority in 60% of the seats and the balance 20% are mixed seats just like Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar.

In short, the Malays and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak and not the Chinese hold the balance of power. So the pragmatic thing would be for the Chinese to work with those who hold the balance of power for a better and more secure future. And that was what Umno and Barisan Nasional were offering the Chinese voters of Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar yesterday.

What was DAP offering the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar voters? Nothing really other than DAP through PAN would guarantee that PAS will fail in its bid to pass a private member’s bill in Parliament to amend the Syariah laws in the state of Kelantan.

How would blocking the increase in the punishment for Muslims caught not fasting in Kota Bharu improve the life of Chia Kim Peong, the Chinese fish trader in Sungai Besar, or improve the sales of the fourth generation Ah Loke’s pau shop in Kuala Kangsar? Would Pakatan’s success in blocking the Syariah amendment bill help put more money in the pockets of the Chinese in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar?

And Mahathir brought an even more complicated and totally unrelated issue to those in Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar, the 1MDB issue. Will solving the 1MDB issue, in the event it really needs solving, guarantee that the Chinese will be able to catch more fish and sell more pau?

Mahathir turned the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections into a Referendum exercise. If you oppose Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak then do not vote Umno or Barisan Nasional. Vote PAN or Pakatan Harapan instead. The Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections must be turned into a platform to send Najib a message.

So the voters did just that. They voted Umno-Barisan Nasional to send Najib a message that they support him and do not support Mahathir. And they also sent DAP a message by voting Umno instead of DAP’s proxy, PAN. So now both Mahathir and DAP will have to go back to the drawing board and re-plan their strategy. Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

So what is Mahathir’s and DAP’s next move? Clearly the move to use the Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar by-elections to make Najib weaker has failed. In fact, the opposite has happened. Najib became stronger because of these two by-elections. And one thing for sure, what Mahathir did has more or less sealed the coffin of his son, Mukhriz. The Umno grassroots leaders now consider Mahathir and his family as pariahs.