What are the trends that I see in today's politics?
It is interesting to observe what is happening in Malaysian politics.
I will briefly share the pattern of what I see unfolding in Malaysia. Things may change as a result of exposure or some things may intentionally be floated as the red herring. But, as usual, we just have to keep watching.
Ismail Sabri is a temporary PM
Unless Ismail Sabri Yaakob becomes too comfortable as prime minister and refuses to vacate his seat, it is likely that he will vacate his post for one of his superiors or he will be booted out of Putrajaya in no time.
For this reason, Ismail Sabri was favoured compared to the other candidates contending for the post. Umno needed someone to warm the seat in order to block Anwar Ibrahim from becoming the prime minister.
Both Najib Abdul Razak and Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are eyeing for the post, but due to their ongoing corruption cases, their ambitions are delayed. Between Najib and Zahid, unless they can strike a compromise, it will be a battle for the same post.
Already within certain camp, I have observed that Zahid has been demonised, saying that after being Covid positive, he was on some medication which affected his mental stability.
My gut feelings are that Zahid will be sidelined and Najib will be the one and only contender. He may not be very popular with Malaysians in general, but for him, all that matters is to return to power by all means.
Whether the trend will continue depends on how successful Barisan and Perikatan Nasional in spitting PH votes and creating confusion and doubts at their targeted leaders.
Discrediting Anwar and the key PH leaders
Lim Kit Siang is no longer the focus these days, instead it is the other leaders such as his son, Lim Guan Eng. Anything that can discredit Guan Eng as a person, they will go for it.
The main target is none other than Opposition leader and main contender for the prime minister post - Anwar Ibrahim.
The trend that we have seen recently is a spate of articles and letters written by people who claimed that they had earlier supported Anwar. I woke up one morning to see a message sent to me by a former MP who claimed that his sister had written a letter that argues against having Anwar as the leader in PH.
Unless people are now aware, the sudden change in the support by these 'influencers' towards Anwar is something that will be effectively deny Anwar the chances of being the next future prime minister. The character assassination has also been played up against a number of politicians who are the key players in PH.
This is, after all, the only way to disillusion the grassroots in PH. Once disillusioned, many of these people who used to support Anwar and PH would slowly give up their desire to see a change of government.
Even in the lead up to the last General Election, there were a number of cybertroopers who feigned to be once ardent supporters of Anwar and PH, but they always claimed they had been disillusioned.
That to me is clearly a strategy to create the domino effect on people's support for PH, with the hope that they will either swing back their support to BN or they will decide not to vote.
In the next one to two years, BN will want to be seen as the ones solving the country's woes. It will have no reason to share the credit with PH.
Fortunate enough, because of the pandemic, Perikatan Nasional comprising Parti Pribumi Bersatu, Umno, PAS and other BN component parties were the ones being heckled and finally crushed. Ismail Sabri's new cabinet is basically comprising the same group of people -- or what I call a minor reshuffle of positions.
If the pandemic continues to worsen, would PH be blamed although this is supposed to be a bipartisan effort? Or, if the number of cases has decreased, would PH be able to claim credit? After all, the mainstream media and some alternative media are being controlled by BN.
I certainly hope that things will not be played along the political line but in a situation we are now in, do you think the scenario I have painted here is impossible? We have already seen how the mainstream media have played up the story to give Ismail the credence for achieving an agreement signed by PH leaders.
Those of us who have read the document know there is nothing special about the contents.
Discrediting PH Supporters
In fact, it is not only the PH leaders who are being discredited. Now, the trend appears to be also to discredit PH supporters.
PH largely has all along depended on the social media to disseminate information. Hence, not only is there a law passed to control the spread of false information, now, false information is also created intentionally to discredit all the posts that one reads in the social media.
For example, a local Malay daily claim that the Selangor State Government offers RM1000 to every person who suffers from Covid-19. The post was spread on the social media, and people who helped to disseminate the information, became the target of ridicule by their friends for disseminating information without so-called verifying the truth.
Anything is possible with these cybertroopers. Recently, when Ismail Sabri became prime minister, a number of newspapers worldwide spelt doom to Malaysia's future. It appeared in Bloomberg, Al-Jazeera, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, etc.
In one post, I discovered most of the links had been modified so that the moment you clicked on the articles, a screen appeared:
WE CAN’T SEEM TO FIND THE PAGE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.
This would slow down people's efforts to share news on the social media. If no one exposes this, the news would be easily dismissed as 'fake'.
Unlike PH supporters who do things without being paid, I believe there are among others, some former journalists and retirees who have been recruited by BN to wage the psychological warfare.
When I was writing for a local portal, whenever the article attracted negative comments, not from one but a whole "herd", I could see that the standard of English used was very low. Although they carried Chinese names, I sensed that a lot of them were not using their real identifies.
These days, the cybertroopers have a certain good command of the languages, and I would not be surprised that these former journalists are involved in writing letters. even on behalf of people who would later stand as Independents to woo PH supporters.
I am pretty sure that, after this blog post comes under their radar, it will be attacked, and the "attackers" will no more be done by people with half-baked level of English but some veterans in journalism who use some fictitious names to attack.
I think the idea of Independents will only work when there are already two very strong coalitions, especially in countries such as US, Australia and United Kingdom.
Even when Independents were to contest, they will not be able to form a government on their own.
They become the "free willy" people who can swing to any coalition, subject to their whims and fancies, and voters will not have control over them. It will not be any difference from what we now call "katak" who hop from one political party to another to cause the collapse of the government.
In countries where Independent candidates play a role, these candidates belong to an umbrella political party. At the end of the day, they will still become another political party. What difference does it make? It's just to complicate our political system, and more importantly to split PH's votes.
As I mentioned to one of them, BN supporters are unlikely to vote for them; therefore, their presence in a constituency will not reduce BN's votes but PH's chances of winning the seat. They will go for constituencies where the PH candidates are seen to be "weak."
Looking at the trend now, some of the Independent candidates in the making are getting coverage on talkshows and given the boost by even BN friendly media. They are seen as 'champions' of the people and speaking things that attract only the PH supporters.
If a typical BN politician were to stand in election as Independent candidate and of course, if he speaks like another BN candidate, not many supporters from PH or even BN for the matter, would support.
So, trust me, since the idea of Independents was floated a few years ago, it is to serve BN, rather than PH's agenda. And when Mahiaddin's government collapsed, Ismail Sabri had the support of a few Independents, didn't he? Did these Independents consult their constituents to get a general consensus? How independent are they?
How can PH supporters then justify supporting the Independents? At the end of the day, the disillusionment will get worse. That's the agenda that I see.
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