The devastasting defeat of Parti Keadilan Nasional (PKN) candidate and the landslide victory of the Barisan Nasional in the Indera Kayangan by-election is another instance as to how the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington have changed the political landscape not only globally, but for every country, including Malaysia.
The 911 terrorist attacks have been a boon to incumbents in government worldwide, especially authoritarian or high-handed regimes to justify their undemocratic and repressive laws and policies, as illustrated by the Australian national elections on November 10, 2001 where John Howard was able to head off a certain defeat for his coalition by fully exploiting the 911 "terror" card in the Australian polls.
Sarawak was in fact the first in the world to exploit the 911 terrors to manipulate and intimdidate voters to rally behind the incumbent party during the Sarawak state general elections on September 27, 2001 and the Indera Kayangan by-election is the second time such a terror election card is used in Malaysia by the Barisan Nasional to put fear among the voters to distract them from the many long-standing issues of justice, freedom, democracy and good governance - as illustrated by the nightly 90-second Barisan Nasional propaganda footage which doctored the CNN clips and broadcast under the camouflage of prime-time news for over three weeks on national television.
They will not be the only occasions. The next general elections, which I expect in 18 months sometime next year, will see the 911 terror election campaign of the Barisan Nasional in its full intensity, destructiveness and wickedness, and would be thousand-fold more powerful than its three-decades-old "May 13" campagn of fear invoked in very general elections since 1969.
It is most unfortunate that the various legitimate and important causes like the Damansara Chinese primary school, Vision School, press freedom, human rights, accountability and transparency were completely overshadowed in the by-election campaign by the two issues of 911 terror and the Islamic State, giving the Barisan Nasional the opportunity to claim that these issues have lost the support of the people.
PKN claimed that despite its rout in the by-election, it had picked up more votes from the Malaysian Chinese, getting 620 votes on Saturday as compared to 152 votes during the 1999 general elections. It is a mystery as to how anyone can make such a specific and exact claim on the number of Malaysian Chinese votes (or of any racial group) secured by any party in elections, when voting is secret.
Be that as it may, if it is true that PKN secured 620 Malaysian Chinese votes in Indera Kayangan on Saturday, this would represent about 20 per cent of the Chinese votes cast.
It is sad if the maximum support that could be secured for the Damansara Chinese primary school and Vision school issues are only 20 per cent of the Chinese voters, despite the hard campaigning by the Chinese education veteran Loot Ting Yu.
It is not only Opposition parties, but also all interest groups in the civil society, which must get back to the drawing board to reconsider the new political dynamics wrought by the 911 terrorist attacks to devise new and effective strategies to ensure that their respective causes are not drowned out by the two dominant issues in Malaysian politics in the new few years, viz. the post-911 political scenario and the Islamic state issue.
(21/1/2002)