“It doesn't matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.”
- Benjamin Netanyahu

COMMENT | The more Pakatan Harapan talks about needing Dr Mahathir Mohamad to secure rural Malay votes, the more this plays into the hands of Umno. There are three ways that Umno uses this particular narrative.

The first is that a majority of the Malay community does not support Harapan, hence Mahathir is a traitor to the Malay race by attempting to split the vote, the second is that the mandarins of Harapan realise that their choice of Mahathir as the Big Cheese leading the charge is causing dissonance amongst the faithful, and the third, is that it also gives the Umno state the opportunity to attack the legacy of Mahathir, which are:

1. Gives succour to those why do not want to whitewash his contributions to this country.

2. Allow the ruling hegemon to use the opposition own words about the former prime minister to point to the hypocrisy of Harapan.

They do this without harm to themselves or their narrative that the opposition is weak and in need of saving. The more Harapan invest in the narrative that they need Mahathir and the rural Malay vote (not to mention all those corruption scandals that apparently will cause the zombie apocalypse), the more damage this does to their narrative of change.

If the Harapan leadership and supporters think that what Australian National University (ANU) researcher Ross Tapsell said about BN winning the cyberwar is complete bunkum, I suggest stepping out of the echo chambers.

Not only is Umno winning the cyberwar, they use the rhetoric of opposition leaders and their online supporters in propaganda materials that are extremely effective. Now, some people may consider this lazy or maybe it is just working smart...