COMMENT | You know that old saying, there are no victims only volunteers, this sums up how some (maybe even many) feel about their support of Pakatan Harapan. What the last couple of weeks have demonstrated is that the issues facing Harapan are systemic.

Governmental malfeasances on a state level, lack of coherence when it comes to articulating policy positions (when Harapan has policy positions that is) and the politics of demonisation which is crippling in this time of a pandemic, are all indicative that Harapan has been hanging onto the coattails (and emulating) failed BN governments instead of being the alternative to the system in place.

Sure, the backtracking and failure to implement campaign promises were important factors in these diminishing returns opposition, however, people could forgive a lot if only they did not feel that they were being played for chumps. Does anyone really believe that nobody in Harapan knew of the forest reserve debacle for instance?

The easy answer seems to be a change of leadership and injecting fresh young faces into the mix. I am all for that, but like everything else, it is a lot more complicated than merely replacing the old guard with young Turks.

Perhaps you have read about all these names of young political operatives bandied about. The tone of which implies that these young politicians are the panacea for this rancid political landscape. This is the problem with personality politics.

It is pointless throwing out names of young politicians because none of them has demonstrated that they want to lead the opposition. None of them have staked political ground or even made it clear that they believe they are the future of the party, much less presented a road map of where they think this country should be heading.

How on earth can anyone cheerlead for political personalities when they have shown no interests, but even more importantly, willingness to step into the ring? Unlike political parties all over the world where young people are striking out on their own and against the political order of their parties, it would seem that young political operatives here want to be anointed to higher office.

Secondly, what kind of politics are we advocating here? The problem with Harapan is that its deeds have not matched its rhetoric. Harapan has been dismissive of its base because they believe – and a section of the voting polity has proven them right – that people would vote for them because they are the “lesser of two evils”.

Or because some folks believe that there is no other choice. Decades of demonising third party candidates (even those endorsed by credible voices) have resulted in partisan quicksand where the harder you struggle to break free, the faster you sink in.

With this in mind, young political operatives in Malaysia just ape the political rhetoric of their party elders. And can you blame them? If young political operatives demonstrate an ounce of independent thinking, they are demonised by the base who allege that they are not team players and who for years have practised the rancorous partisan politics which they now turn on their own.

Going against party orthodoxy should be baseline politics for young political operatives, but can you name any who have bucked the groupthink, and attempted to stake political ground that has not been covered and soiled by their political elders?

Young Malay leaders

And let us be honest here. When we talk of young leaders, what the Harapan base really wants is a young Malay leader who they think will sway a sizable number of Malay voters to Harapan. Ideally, this young Malay leader would have “progressive” values that would appeal to the non-Malay base.

That is a tall order for any leader, and this is a problem. What the long Umno watch did was economically and socially balkanise this country. Hence, the issues faced by the rural polities are completely different from those faced by the urban and semi-urban voting polity.

Furthermore, political agendas have also become balkanised, with the preoccupations of the urban and semi-urban areas forming the core value system of the political elites, but which has very little to do with heartland issues and a polity that are labelled as ignorant and backward.

What is needed is decentralised grassroots level party activism which adheres to set principles and objectives shared by all. Hence, what we get are state-level actors who understand the economic needs of their electorate but who coalesce under a general egalitarian framework of party then coalition.

This way political operatives, regardless of race, share an ideological framework but are free to provide local solutions for local problems.

This way, all political operatives, whether Malay or non-Malay, believe in the same values and are not targeted because of race or religion. This would mean dog-whistle politics from Malays and non-Malays would be verboten.

What is not needed (because it usually backfires) are messiahs-like political figures who at the end of the day are only concerned about their personal political survival and that of their cronies.

Stop investing in personalities. Political parties have to have an ideology, policy positions and an agenda. Harapan has none of this now.

What they relied on for some time now were pleas to emotions, rabid online mobs who did not reflect the reality on the ground but most of all, an incompetent, racist federal government that made them look better than what they were.

We now know that the DAP behaved exactly how MCA did during their long watch with Umno. One would have thought that young politicians who are intelligent would be advocating a more nuanced response when it comes to non-Malay racial politics instead of the scorched earth politics of the oldies. 

This of course has not happened. Most probably, because the base would have nothing to do with it.

This is why DAP leader Lim Guan Eng has to “reassure” the base working with the current government (whatever it calls itself) is not some sort of unity government. Of course, all of this is contradictory because nobody really knows what kind of deals are being struck behind closed doors and whom those deals benefit.

Bipartisanship should not be an issue. The problem is that now Harapan makes everything look suspect because for years they have ditched any form of bipartisanship because they claimed to have the moral high ground but when given the responsibility, all they did was gaslight their voting base and the public.

Are young leaders needed? Most certainly but they should be individuals who want to lead and have a vision of what they believe coalition politics should be about. They should not be tied to the old ideas propagated by the geriatric elite we have leading this country.