“A politician, a man engaged in party contests, must be an opportunist. Let us give up saying that word as if it contained a slur. If you want to win in party action, I take it for granted that you want to lure the majority to your side. I never heard of any man in his senses who was fishing for a minority.”

- Woodrow Wilson

As someone who has had a few public spats with Rafizi Ramli, the honourable representative from Pandan, I was gratified to read that a prominent Malay opposition leader was entertaining the idea that the stratagems of opposition in wooing the Malay vote was not working. I say “entertaining” because until there is evidence that the opposition is moving away from its failing strategies of wooing the Malay vote and embarking on something different, that is all it will be.

I have spent a great many articles writing about the Malay community not because I view them as an electoral resource but because I have spent the greater part of my working life working with Malays under stressful situations and found them hardworking, creative and motivated just like any other Malaysians who chose to serve their country. While some may argue that this has changed, I think this points more to policy and institutional failures rather than “culture” as some would have us believe.

Let me be very clear. I do not think that the failure of the opposition in courting the Malay rests solely on Malay politicians. It is much deeper than that. In ‘Challenging Umno orthodoxy’, I wrote -

“If the so-called oppositional Malay leadership, aided and abetted by mendacious non-Malay powerbrokers, continue to shovel the same horse manure to the people who have not benefitted from these so-called privileges, then I would argue that Malay supremacy is not really about the oppression of the non-Malays but rather the continued oppression of the Malays.”

In other words, the non-Malay component of the oppositional front has been complicit in failing the demographic they claim will get them in the driver’s seat of this country. We are dealing with institutional and policy failures of the opposition when it comes to the issue of the ‘Malay’ vote.

I want to highlight two points that I have made over the years I have written about the Malay community. These two points are the reason why the opposition finds it difficult convincing the Malay polity that they are a credible alternative.

1. “Furthermore, the mainstream Muslim political landscape is devoid of any secular alternatives. In lieu of policies or discourse that enables the Malay, polity to discover sources other than their holy book or explore their spiritual impulses without sanctions from the state, all the community has is an Islam that restricts their intellectual growth and encourages conformity through Umno racial ideology and state-sponsored religion.

2. “The opposition meanwhile does nothing to counter this but reacts to the establishment’s dirty tricks to gain political mileage from their own racial bases that further erodes any sense of solidarity between the races. There is a big difference between solidarity and unity.”

The big question is, what strategies does Rafizi think is not working?

Let us be honest. Umno has only three strategies, which are deployed in tandem that has been extremely effective in securing the Malay vote. Those three are cash, race and religion. Well, there is a fourth, electoral malfeasances, but an overwhelmingly majority would neutralise this, so this is the least of the opposition’s problems.

Now that we know what the Umno strategy is, what is the opposition strategy to counter this? As far as I can tell, when it comes to race and religion, Malay oppositional leaders have been pandering to the Malay community in the hopes of appearing more Malay or more Islamic to this community. Cash, of course, is another issue.

The opposition does not have the resources to match Umno’s. This is however changing. The ‘cash is king’ mantra is not sustainable in the current economic climate. However, the opposition does its own ‘cash is king’ routine by attempting to appeal to the Malay vote by increasing funds to ‘Malay’ organisations, both public and private, and numerous opposition personalities are engaging in freebie programmes in the guise of elevating the burdens of the general public.

If the demographic that you wish to woo thinks you are not sincere, it could be because what you say and do are completely different. You cannot say that you are different from Umno, will run the country differently from Umno and claim to believe in certain principles, but then do the same thing Umno does except with less cash.