Both Pakatan Rakyat and Barisan Nasional admit that Sabah and Sarawak are Barisan Nasional’s ‘fixed deposit’. It is because of Sabah and Sarawak that Umno is still in power. Hence Sabah and Sarawak must be turned to bring down Umno.
And this is what Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s team of so-called advisers are too stupid to understand. And because of this Umno may be history come the next general election in three or four years’ time.
The opposition has very skilfully played up the ‘Kalimah Allah’, Bahasa Malaysia Bible, conversion, body ‘snatching’, children ‘kidnapping’, etc., issues. Najib and Umno do not realise that the opposition set up booby-traps and they walked right into it.
These laws have actually been around a long time and they were never a problem before this. Only since the 2008 general election have these issues been stepped up and have become hot.
And now the voters in Sabah and Sarawak are extremely upset. Can Barisan Nasional retain Sabah and Sarawak? Even the top leadership of Umno does not think so.
In the past it was just Umno that played the politics of the 3Rs. And that was one of the main reasons why many Malay liberals, like me, rejected Umno. Now the opposition is playing this same brand of dangerous politics.
The issue of ‘Kalimah Allah’ is very damaging to Umno. In the end it may see the downfall of Umno when the Sabah and Sarawak voters reject Barisan Nasional, meaning reject Umno. In this whole episode Umno is seen as the aggressor while the non-Muslims are seen as the victims.
This issue is not confined to just the Christians. Even the non-Christians such as Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, etc., are on the side of the Christians and are opposed to Umno. Umno is in for a damn hard time come the next election.
The opposition realises that issues regarding abuse of power, corruption, transparency, accountability, good governance, etc., are not enough to bring down Barisan Nasional or Umno. If it were then Barisan Nasional would have been kicked out back in 1990 or 1999 at the height of the anti-government movements. They need something more potent to bring down Barisan Nasional and Umno.
And what is more potent than the politics of the 3Rs?
So now the issue of Malay privileges, Article 153, UiTM, etc., need to be played up. They are even asking that the Malay Regiment be disbanded, much to the chagrin of the Rulers who feel that this is pushing things a bit too far.
The Christians versus Muslims (a more than 1,000-year-old ‘war’) and the ‘Kalimah Allah’, Malay Bible, and much more, are also being played to the hilt to demonstrate how Muslims persecute non-Muslims and how unfairly non-Muslims in Malaysia are being treated.
And many opposition supporters, Malays included, are questioning the constitutional monarchy, its relevance, the waste of money maintaining the monarchy, and how better off Malaysia would be as a republic.
Demolish Umno’s politics of the 3Rs and you demolish Umno. Demolish Barisan Nasional in Sabah and Sarawak and you demolish Umno. But you need to fight Umno by playing Umno’s game of the 3R politics. You must beat them at their own game.
Since 1990 it has been proven that the issues of abuse of power, corruption, transparency, accountability, good governance, etc., are not enough to demolish Umno. It needs something more potent than that. And there is nothing more potent than the politics of the 3Rs.
And that, in a nutshell, is what we are seeing happening in Malaysia today. And when Christians and Muslims have been at war and have been competing with one another for more than 1,000 years, it is not difficult to use this animosity as a strong political strategy.
Whether this strategy is working will be revealed in the 14th General Election. If Najib continues to sleep and continues to trust his half-baked advisers, then Umno is dead meat very soon. I would say it is a foregone conclusion that the way things are going we are seeing the last days of Umno.
What I am more concerned about is what will happen after that. Will Umno just pack its bags and hand power to Pakatan Rakyat and allow Anwar Ibrahim to take the throne in Putrajaya?
If I were Umno I would never admit defeat. So much bad blood exists (and which is going to get worse over the next three or four years) and it is not easy to forgive and forget. There is a lot of what the Malays would call dendam. For Umno to just pack its bags and hand over power to its bitter enemies is a fate worse than death. And if I were Umno I would rather see a civil war.
But that would be me. Maybe Umno is made of better stuff. But then when the issue is Malay versus non-Malays and Christianity versus Islam anything can happen because this is no longer just about politics.
I suppose Christians and Muslims will never be happy until they see the country burn and bodies piled up on the streets. This is what the Abrahamic faiths or Semitic religions are all about — war, war, and more war.
Christians and Muslims are the most idiotic people on this earth. 2,000 years of history has proven that. And both consider themselves God’s chosen people. And this is what my cousin e-mailed me:
Each of the three Abrahamic Religions (all of which have the same core belief, i.e. that there is a “personal” God who cares about us as individuals) came before their Good Books. So let’s look at the Religions first, and make the huge assumption that, whoever created them, did so with the very best of intentions.
Now, anyone today with half a brain can see quite clearly that Religion is causing tremendous strife all across the globe. So that means that those good intentions have been totally screwed up, since the opposite of what (presumably) was supposed to be the result of Religion is now occurring. And then we have the Good Books – the instruments to which all Religionists tend to point to justify their killing sprees and, by modern-day standards, their acts of barbarity.
Come on, please! If there is a personal God, was that God’s intention? If there is a personal God, to answer “yes” to that question would seem to me to be the greatest insult anyone could ever throw at their own God.
So, quite frankly, I think it seems a lot like Religions and their so-called Good Books are the Devil’s work!
|