This is also the time family members get to brainwash each other on which party to vote for the next federal government. The swing in support to either BN or PR would be fierce and wilder than Dow Jones during sub-prime crisis.
Of course PM Najib Razak’s PR team realizes the significance of this and has spent many hours on the drawing board preparing scripts to attract Chinese voters. That’s why PM Najib looks more Chinese than all the past prime ministers combined.
To a certain extent, he’s even more Chinese than the Chinese themselves (*tongue-in-cheek*). There’re thousands hanging buntings by the roadsides depicting him wearing Chinese traditional costume with his Chinese New Year message. Heck, he even tried his Chinese-friendly trick on radio station by having conversation in Mandarin with his son, although the stunt turns out rather funny (*grin*) and weird. If only he has the stamina he may just put on the lion dance costume and jump around your house begging for your votes.
Ultimately, the question will be – which party to choose and why? If your answer is the opposition because the current regime is corrupt, then get ready for a rude awakening – the so-called corrupt BN (Barisan Nasional) will win the next general election hands down. In case you’re still scratching your head peeling kuaci, the voters who voted opposition back in 2008 did not do so primarily because the current regime was corrupted.
If that was the main reason, how on earth could former PM Mahathir rule this land for a whopping 22 years, despite the fact that his regime opened the floodgates of corruption and racism? In actual fact, Malaysian Chinese and Malays love corruption, without them realizing it.
Like it or not, corruption has been part and parcel of Malaysian culture, thanks to Father of Corruption – Mahathir Mohamad. That was why a study done some moons ago found that graduates actually thought corruption was not such a big deal after all. Corruption has been ingrained into the mindset of Malaysian citizens so much so that it’s almost legal and inseparable entity from daily lifes.
Corruption was like lion-dance during Chinese New Year and “meriam-buloh” during Hari Raya festivals. While Malaysian Chinese consider corruption as a main ingredient to get business going, Malaysian Malays consider corruption as “rezeki”. That’s why the opposition can only go so far by drumming government massive corruptions as the reason why they should be booted from Putrajaya.
Do you really think corruption will disappear into thin air after opposition wins the next general election and form the federal government? Why do you think everybody rush to lick Lim Guan Eng and Anwar Ibrahim boots to be fielded as candidates? And do you really think Sabah’s King of Frogs Jeffrey Kitingan, Wilfred Bumburing and Yong Teck Lee really want to take care of the Sabahan?
Pleeeeze!!! With the exception of probably Lim Kit Siang and Nik Aziz, you can’t really trust the rest of the opposition politicians. If they have no intention of enriching themselves, then President Obama is still a virgin. Ever wonder why Mahathir confidently declared he will not leave the country before the next election results are announced? That’s because he was dead sure the current corrupt regime will still form the next federal government.
If the recent AES implementation criticisms by the public was any indicator, it shows that the public can’t live without corruption, well, at least majority of them. Malaysian drivers like to speed and drive as if they’re Formula-1 drivers and they have no plan of changing their lifestyle (or rather drive-style). And AES was a classic example of how zero corruption will affect their lifes.
While they accept the reality that they would be caught breaking the laws, they want the flexibility to negotiate their way out through bribes. And you can’t “kautim” (settle) by giving money to the AES camera on the spot, can you? These people would rather pay RM50 as “coffee-money” for each of 10 traffic offences than to pay full RM300 for 2 offence tickets, literally speaking.
From sales executives to company directors, 90% of their business deals involve “under-table” money, one way or another. If the only thing that opposition can promise is eliminate corruption, then a sizeable Chinese and Malays would rather vote for the corrupt regime, if that was how they secured their current businesses or “rezeki” in the first place. So, does that mean the current corrupt regime should be returned to power?
Well, perhaps the answer can be found by the recent advise from Mahathir himself - choose between the lesser of two evils. Of course when Mahathir blogged his advise, he was referring to the possibility of violent demonstration should the opposition lose in the coming election, although I can’t figure out till today how can one lose something that it does not possess in the first place (*grin*).
Since the opposition has not win the federal government since independence, there’s no benchmark of how corrupted they would become. Thus, the perception of the general public – the BN regime is tremendously corrupt while the PR regime will be mildly corrupt, if the latter choose to corrupt after all. The choice is pretty obvious based on Mahathir’s “choose between the lesser of two evils” theory.
The good news for the opposition fans – the corrupt Chinese businessmen are flexible to switch sides and butter the opposition’s bread should there be a change in government. The bad news – the corrupt Chinese businessmen are worry and perceive a lesser corrupt governments to mean lesser business deals for them.
While we’re still adamant the current BN regime will win the next general election, there’s a distant possibility the opposition may get enough seats to form the next government – via defections from BN camp. But for that to happen, a hung government must happen and the BN regime does not play dirty such as blocking opposition from entering the palace, intimidating and “hiding” opposition politicians, withheld official votes count, massive blackouts at counting centres and even declare the election results null and voids due to phantom voters.
Can you see how phantom voters can act as double-edged sword? Now, has anyone wonders what happen to the disappearance of PM Najib during 1st-Jan-2013, when he should be doing the New Year countdown instead of his deputy?
Underground naughty rumours has it that when the PM should be shouting “Happy New Year”, he had instead flew into a resort in Hong Kong. The interesting part was where all the local tycoons were summoned to a private meeting with the prime minister. But we’ll reserve that article for another day (*grin*). As of now, the opposition needs to behave - lock in existing supporters while compete for fence-sitters. But going by the rate on how PAS and DAP childishly playing the religion cards the same way BN used to play, no wonder Mahathir is grining from ear to ear.
Worst still, some opposition figures are already counting their chicks before they’re hatched, when they should instead presenting their arsenal of propositions for the betterment of the people.
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