AS sure as night follows day, Pakatan Harapan (PH) is certain toxic bigotry will be a big part of Umno’s arsenal in the run-up to the polls.

As a coalition that includes the Chinese-majority DAP, PH knows it is vital to persuade Malay voters that it will protect Muslim-Malay interests if it wins control of Putrajaya.

For a start, PH leaders believe the greater prominence of its two newest members – Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) and PAS splinter party Amanah – is helping to blunt attacks that the coalition is led by DAP.

“Malays can see an Islamist party and a Malay party as components in a coalition that stands for good governance and reformist politics,” said Amanah communications director Khalid Samad.

However, said the Shah Alam MP, the challenge is explaining this without coming off like “Malay nationalists or religious extremists.”

The bogeyman

Despite Khalid’s confidence, it will not be a walk in the park convincing the ground that Malay political power will be safe in the hands of a PH government.

The impression civil servant Kamarul Salleh has of PH reflects the corrosive influence of Umno’s brand of racism on the Malay electorate.

Kamarul feels the pinch of rising prices for groceries and knows the country is in trouble, but is unsure whether he can trust the opposition with federal power.

“They say that if you vote for PH, it is a vote for DAP. DAP runs PH because it has the most parliamentary seats,” he said.

He was referring to the 37 seats DAP holds, compared with PH components PKR’s 29 and Amanah’s six. Bersatu has one.

“So it can dominate PH because PKR does not have many seats and neither do the other parties,” he said recently in Shah Alam.

Kamarul’s aversion to PH is rooted in the age-old fear Muslim Malays have of DAP –  that as a secular party, it will remove Islam as the religion of the federation and end affirmative action policies for the Bumiputera.

This is despite DAP’s constant pledge to uphold Islam as the religion of the federation as well as the Malay privileges enshrined in Article 153 of the Federal Constitution.

Analysts such as Prof Redzuan Othman predicts that as the campaign heats up for the general election, racial rhetoric will be dialled up to divert the attention of voters like Kamarul from more pressing issues such as inflation.

For instance, the current brickbat wielded by Umno leaders is that the real PH leader and eventual opposition prime minister is DAP national chairman Lim Kit Siang.

Studies by think tanks such as Merdeka Center show that such provocation does work, particularly with rural Muslim Malays, whose votes hold the key to Putrajaya.

“Among all countries in this region, Malaysians have consistently voted along communal lines for as long as we’ve had elections,” said  Merdeka Center executive director Ibrahim Suffian.

For Muslim Malays, Umno and PAS have been the only viable political parties simply because they have been around for more than five decades and because they are communal. One represents race and the other, religion.

“So when Malays want to show their anger at Umno, they choose PAS,” said Ibrahim.

And even though Bersatu has the legendary Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Ibrahim said the data did not show that it had gained the trust of Muslim Malays like Umno or PAS had.

The alliance with DAP has also tainted Dr Mahathir’s credentials as a Muslim Malay leader, said Ibrahim.

Debating racism  

Bersatu leaders claim they are up to the challenge of explaining the party’s ties with the DAP.

Shukur Mohamad of Batu Pahat regularly holds ceramah and dialogues with Johor’s Muslim Malays, who are arguably the country’s most loyal Umno supporters.

“I explain to Malays how the parliamentary seat argument is flawed. If an Umno MP is defeated, he is defeated by another Malay MP from either Amanah, Bersatu or PKR, because an Umno candidate is always challenged by  another Malay candidate.” said Shukur, who campaigns in Sri Gading, a seat that Umno won by a 5,761 vote majority in 2013.

“So I tell them, the more Amanah or Bersatu candidates win, the more Malay MPs you will get in Pakatan, and that Pakatan can only come to power with lots of Malay MPs.”

The logic, he claimed, is gradually sinking in as evidenced by the better turnouts for Bersatu programmes in Johor’s Malay heartlands such as Mersing and Kota Tinggi, places that even PAS used to be chased out of.

The trick, says another Johor Bersatu leader, Mazlan Bujang, is to have smaller interactive sessions so that the Muslim-Malay audience can debate and ask questions.

“In order to deal with racist views, you have to show how their logic is flawed. It cannot be just a ceramah where the communication is one-way,” said Mazlan, who is Tebrau Bersatu chief.

“My approach is dialogue so that they can reply to me and I can counter their arguments. Only then do they see how their logic is wrong,” said Mazlan, who claimed that he had registered more than 2,000 new Bersatu members through such dialogue sessions. – May 27, 2017.