THE ghost of May 13, tragic riots that rocked the country and left hundreds dead 50 years ago, is still used by unscrupulous politicians to further their hidden agendas, said academics.

Universiti Malaya research fellow Por Heong Hong said for many years, the tragedy has been co-opted by right-wing politicians “who raised it to evoke fear and memories of the 1969 post-election violence and used it to threaten Malaysians to vote for certain political parties in many elections in the past”.

She added that the May 13 symbol seems to have lost its power over many Malaysian voters with the change of governments in Penang and Selangor in 2008.

“However, the exorcism of May 13 does not imply the end of racial politics as many right-wing politicians continue to play up the race card.

“Right-wing groups have been sabotaging many post-GE14 reforms by saying they undermine the status of a certain race.”

Political scientist Azmil Tayeb of Universiti Sains Malaysia asserts that although May 13 is still being used by some politicians and their supporters as a fear-mongering tactic, there may be fewer direct and open references to the tragedy.

But, he added, the underlying message is still the same – ethnic Chinese “need to know their place and not step on the Malays who are gracious enough to let them live peacefully and prosperously in Malaysia. If not, a bloodbath will ensue akin to what happened on May 13”.

Sharing Azmil’s view, independent historian Ariffin Omar said the tragedy “is still being used mainly by Umno politicians who want to play the race card because they believe by threatening the non-Malays with racial riots, they can cow them into submission”.

He said the 14^th general election (GE14) showed the bogey of May 13 does not have a potent effect on the majority of the voters – Malays and non-Malays.

“For non-Malays, they know that the Malays are in the majority and so no matter how they vote, unless there is a swing in the Malay vote to the opposition, the non-Malay vote will not mean much. Malays, too, are not influenced by the spectre of May 13.

“There is a significant Malay middle class that do not buy the May 13 rhetoric because they too know that Malay voters can decide the outcome of the general election.

“At the same time, the middle class Malays will no longer tolerate another ethnic riot as it will affect their economic and social interests.”

Similarly, Christopher Chong of the Faculty of Creative Industry in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman feels while direct reference to May 13 is no longer fashionable, nonetheless the fear of Malays losing political power is present in current political discourse.

“For example, how PAS-Umno politicians play up the ‘Malay-Muslim community under threat’ discourse in recent rallies.”

Universiti Malaya’s Khoo Ying Hooi concurs that politicians “often use May 13 as a warning to the multi-racial society of Malaysia to be wary of each other, most of the time with bad intentions for their own political gains”.

Khoo, who is deputy head of Department of International and Strategic Studies, said right-wing politics are on the rise, evident not only from the backlash on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Rome Statute, but also present discourse that is strongly based on the race and religion divide.

Meanwhile, Zaharom Nain thinks that the May 13 bogey is hardly used, or perhaps rarely used.

May 13, he added, has been hardly used in the post-GE14 narrative, not in its explicit sense.

“But, implicitly, all this constant harping on imaginary and imagined `threats’ to race (Malay) and religion (Islam) hark back to the post-May 13 narrative of race, especially being the source of Malaysia’s problems and the need to `protect’ the supposedly exploited and oppressed Malay race.

“It was 50 years ago, and many don’t remember it principally because they had not even been conceived then,” said Zaharom, a professor at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia.

“Yes, some silly media images, like that dumb film Tanda Putra, have been devised to whip up sentiments, but with little effect.”

Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute senior fellow Lee Hwok-Aun observes that May 13 is not being played up as far as public utterances go. However, he shares Por’s concern.

“At the same time, so much sensationalism and disinformation proliferate in private social media networks these days, one cannot take for granted that the ghost of May 13 has truly been exorcised.”

That bogey, he added, “may well have given way to new ones”.

“May 13 used to be the threat wielded to inflame ethnic sentiments; in recent years, DAP has become maligned and demonised as the ‘threat’ against Malays.

“There is one perceivable difference: whereas the spectre of repeating May 13 was previously aimed mainly at non-Malays, race-baiting nowadays takes place mostly within the Malay community.”

Por feels that new communications technology has made things worse because “right-wing politicians today have more platforms than ever to spread bigotry, which has many forms of manifestation, without necessarily associated with May 13.

“Nonetheless, social media as an information diffusion platform without gatekeeping opens up a space for all kinds of speeches and performances, including racist and anti-racist ones.

“The most appropriate way to counter the influence of right-wing politics is through civic engagement and public discourse.”

Zaharom agrees with Por.

“Now we have 24-hour news in different forms due to digitisation. Add social media into the mix, the spread of vile, hateful, unverified (mis)information is that much easier and virtually uncontrollable.”

Lee says Malaysian society seems incapable of having “candid, tempered and constructive conversations that go beyond comfortable assumptions and habits of thoughts”.

He added the extremist and alarmist rhetoric – “the economy is dominated by the Chinese, Malays are under siege” – are easy to demolish.

“But insidiously, other popular arguments, while not inflammatory and even holding some grain of truth, end up speaking to one’s gallery, discounting the other sides’ views, and perpetuating polarisation.

“We keep hearing that, since Malays retain political pre-eminence and hold power in the civil service and GLCs, that the community is ready to remove race preferential policies, or that since non-Malays have greater means for private higher education, that they should not complain about unequal access to public higher education.

“These utterances win popularity within select circles, but fail to foster new compromises and settlements.” – May 12, 2019