Progressives get to test waters in Johor and Negeri Sembilan

JUNE 18 — You are upset that Pakatan Harapan has not reformed the country enough. You are eligible to vote in Johor or Negeri Sembilan. 

You are tempted to not get into the car and drive to Johor on July 11 or August 1 to vote. 

You are upset reading this because it is the same narrative on repeat using a different font. Also, you skipped lunch. 

Let’s flip this to give it dimension.

Is reform storming in the country? No. Is the deputy prime minister not facing the jeopardy of prison because the government he leads has an attorney-general unwilling to let the defence even try to wriggle out of a well-delivered prosecution, because he paused it? Yes. 

Did you feel giddy in 2018, when Pakatan won, and giddier in 2022 because the messianic-like Anwar Ibrahim, the number one reformist candidate for a quarter of a century, was finally prime minister and was about to unleash the reform Kraken?  Undoubtedly.

You are a disappointed Pakatan voter. Worse if you were one as far back as 2008 when it did not have a name for itself, just a hodgepodge of political parties not inclined to allow Barisan Nasional waltz to two-thirds in Parliament.

After all that, four elections with false starts to get to a tryst with destiny, the Madani Project delivers three and a half years of half measures and qualified successes. 

The country is not falling apart but the feeling it’s still the dreary same is hard to fend off. The Middle-East conflict challenges Malaysia, as it does the world, but it’s manageable still.

But what do you do as a voter?

I get this infuriating response from the random irate name on the electoral roll. “I just won’t vote, that will show them!”

Firstly, it shows nothing to no one. 

This is not a typical buying decision. Choosing not to buy overpriced Starbucks drinks over politics has led to X number of stores shuttered in recent years. 

But a country — or in this case a state — is not a retailer, therefore the analogy struggles to translate. 

Voting decides who runs either state, by deciding to not vote, does not mean the respective states are not run for the next five years.  The state is run the next day regardless how many per cent of the electoral roll shows up on election day.

Not showing up to vote means denying yourself the right to affect who gets executive power through accumulation of legislative representation. 

It’s happening whether you like it or not, and no amount of grousing the next five years matters after polling day has as significant an impact as casting the vote.

The pickle in this tickle of retelling the same old is that the prime minister and the members of Pakatan are convinced that a high turnout on July 11 and then August 1, means only good things for them.

In their estimate, those who are mulling “to go or not to go” are disinclined by Pakatan’s performance in the past years but equally disinterested in the other mob.

They are numbed Pakatan voters who are not braindead to know the other lot, Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional and its splinters are committed to limit Malaysia’s social evolution to an acceptable zero.

This is where the Johor and Negeri elections are different from the Sabah election late last year and the impending Sarawak election later this year.  

Over there, state unity is at an all-time high, which seismically shifts choices to local choices versus Semenanjung-infused choices.

Over here in Semenanjung, it is whether apathy mixed with traditional incentives directly or indirectly to the voters yields seats for BN and PN, or social activism mixed with a general sense that things have to be progressive giving Pakatan and some like-minded parties wins.

Are you, the progressive, still upset? Of course you are because it is not ideal. It is a huge shout away from par. 

But actions must be welded to what is possible and not on options unavailable on the menu.

Turn out and vote, if not for Pakatan, there are the other parties drawn to progressive ideas that are not BN or PN. Those in power may have come up short, but those not in power who are traditionalists are not going to pick your values, they are intent on burying them. To steady a Malaysia forever race-based, opposed to equality and divided. 

However underwhelming the present feels, remember you sent a former prime minister to prison, and if 809-pages of a ruling holds out, he is looking at prison till he is in his eighties.

Voting did get things done. Our flag-bearers have poor scorecards but the larger agenda to move us in one direction rather than the other remains. Requires a heck of a lot of fighting daily, but still on the table.

Almost 30 years ago, I put my chips on Anwar not because he was worthy but he was the biggest bat to take a swing at the authoritarian and absolutist BN. 

Anwar was from the system and as such the malfunctions are expected. BN and its splinter PN and every other splinter, are still the same, if anything more convinced in the unique unequal Malaysian solution.

I wrote at the start “four elections with false starts to get to a tryst with destiny.” The last four words were in the opening line of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s inaugural address at India’s independence in 1947. 

He ends the sentence with “we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.”

Not wholly or in full measure. Just substantially. It’s a long game, this.  

And if there is one thing progressives understand, no real gain is realised overnight. On July 11 and then on August 1, Malaysia hears from the south which side of substantial things fall.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.