“Race is there. You're tire of hearing about it? Imagine how f***ing exhausting it is living it.”

- Jon Stewart

Everyone knows what I mean when I say Malaysia will never have an Obama. However, in case some do not, what I really mean is that Malaysia will never have a non-Malay prime minster. Someone from the minority will never be prime minster.

It is even more insidious; someone from a minority will never want to seek the highest office in the land, will never dream of seeking the highest office in the land and would no doubt be told never to even admit to having this dream, because even making this a political objective would invite a whole host of problems from the establishment and the opposition.

This really is not so bad. Or is it? There are many countries in the world were religious and racial minorities live in peace with the majority and sublimate their impulses for egalitarianism for pragmatic peace and economic stability. Indeed, there are examples where minority religious or racial communities oppress the majority and we all know how that turns out or at least we should know, if we bother discovering what goes on beyond our small pond.

Most opposition supporters talk about justice, equality, transparency and universal human rights and have no problem claiming that Malaysia should emulate Singapore. Oppositional politics in this country is not based on any real policy differences but rather based on the numerous corruption scandals that plague the Najib administration. It is merely the politics of opposing.

My own writings on race has most often been outlier as far as establishment or opposition propaganda is concerned. While I have always been critical of identity politics, I have sometimes, especially when in rant mode, fallen into that trap, when faced with the shenanigans of the Umno establishment and the opposition.

As I wrote in ‘Opposition politics: Our brand is ignorance’ - “As has been well-documented in the alternative media, matters of principle that Pakatan supposedly represents is secondary to vanquishing the ruling coalition. The priority here is kicking BN out first and then maybe attempting to address real questions of policy later.

“In other words, in spite of our captive minds - like prisoners who have learnt to adapt to their confinement - we have subverted the racial game that Umno has forced us to play for so long using the language of multiracialism, all the while remaining true to our racial pedigree and only paying lip service to principles which are supposed to be the basis of this alternative front.”

Nowhere is this clearer when it comes to the issue of race. Two recent pieces that essentially deal with identity politics exposes the festering wound of racial politics in South-East Asia and the politics of racial compromise that is considered normal in many countries in the region with diverse racial and religious populations.

The first one has Kholilullah Pasaribu, a researcher from Indonesia’s Association for Elections & Democracy, claiming “If someone said, ‘I am Chinese and I want to vote for Ahok (Jakarta governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama) because he is Chinese or Christian’, that is okay”.

Well, no, that is not okay and probably why politics in Malaysia and Indonesia are filled with the kind of overt racism that is supported by people who think that race-based politics is okay as long as elections are “clean and fair”.