A RECENT article by former deputy defence minister Liew Chin Tong has placed renewed emphasis on the rejection of racial politics.

Malaysian politics, Liew argues, should make the shift to the middle and the moderate because he believes that only political parties that win the Malaysian middle ground can form a stable government.

Yet in the same article, the author admits there is no clear definition of what constitutes “middle ground” in Malaysia, where the term has become a meaningless platitude offered up by politicians to placate and win the swing voters.

But what if those swing voters no longer occupy the middle ground?

Politicians who monger economic and racial anxiety have acted as a centrifugal force moving swing voters away from the centre, and worse still, to view what was previously deemed extreme as normal.

Moving the window

The Overton window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. 

For example, the Overton window would have been thought to have shifted if Malays become amenable to the question of recognising the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC), which they have steadfastly opposed for decades.

What has changed in reality is that Malays in general are more receptive to hudud compared to 20 years ago.

While the Overton window is commonly used to reference the acceptability of government policies and social issues, it could also be applied to gauge the middle ground in Malaysia.

For better or worse, what was known as the middle ground in Malaysia has radically shifted. And it all began with what was heralded as a historic moment in 2018. The new  Pakatan Harapan government was doomed from the get-go due to the misperception that it was led by the Chinese-based DAP.

Exaggerated stories of Malays being sidelined and “Islam under threat” rhetoric to discredit the PH government have had the unintended effect of turning our society to become more reactionary, effectively shifting the middle ground.

What was deemed politically extreme might have become normal to many because of the narrative used against the PH government.

That was never more evident than in the response to PH’s proposal for Malaysian to ratify the ICERD and Rome Statue.

Since the opposition BN and PAS were seen to be shifting the political debate and winning the national argument at that time – despite the falsity of its rhetoric – the PH government was left with no choice but to govern conservatively.

This is no less important because Umno and PAS at that time has been extremely effective in conjuring up the image of the Malays being disadvantaged and therefore pushing the Overton Window in their favour. 

This shifting of the Overton Window, which had left the PH government managing the national sentiment while they were in government, also partly contributed to the establishment of the Malay-Muslim-dominated government in early 2020.

Some would argue that the Sheraton Move was a betrayal of the democratic mandate but the goodwill that PN and BN had obtained, which was realised in recent elections, perhaps hinted that significant Malays could partly agree or feel agnostic with the ousting of the PH government.

Coming back to Liew’s views on the middle ground, it is true that the concept of middle ground lacks political clarity but that is only because nobody in PH possesses the political will to define it emphatically.

What we have heard so far from the current opposition camp is less about what a middle Malaysia entails, than who should be the next Prime Minister.

The trick with politics is if you don’t define it yourself or your stance, you will get defined by your political opponents.

What we have witnessed since 2018 is that the parties, such as Umno, PAS and Bersatu, are not averse to taking a more reactionary and conservative stance in an emphatic manner, which has since given the impression that it is indeed the middle ground of Malaysia.

The Timah controversy, licensing of beer sales and the Thaipusam fiasco in Kedah are the type of events that were previously unthinkable but are increasingly normalised under the PN/BN government.

While these policies have either been scrapped or amended in defence of the rights of minorities, they would however be ridiculed and not contemplated by past governments. This suggests a shift in what Malaysians generally think is acceptable or not.

Secondly, the fact that these issues were injected into national debate serves a purpose in further shifting the Overton Window, and thus it is also a cause for concern.

No matter how wrong or unpalatable these policies are, this is political persuasion par excellence at making the abnormal slowly look normal.

And as long as PH does not define what middle Malaysia means and why the people should go for it, achieving it will remain a pipe dream while the centre is occupied by their political opponents. – December 26, 2021.

* Kenneth Cheng has always been interested in the interplay between human rights and government but more importantly he is a father of two cats, Tangyuan and Toufu. When he is not attending to his feline matters, he is most likely reading books about politics and human rights or playing video games. He is a firm believer in the dictum “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.