You're so vain

You probably think this song is about you

You're so vain (you're so vain)

I bet you think this song is about you

Don't you don't you?

– Carly Simon

COMMENT | DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang wants to know who Umno’s prime minister candidate is in the upcoming (it’s coming folks) general election. I have no idea why some people think that former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak is making a political comeback. He has already been welcomed back in.

While Lim thinks that this may play well with the base, the reality is that Pakatan Harapan is in shambles, and as one of the few truth speakers in Harapan, DAP’s Perai assemblyperson P Ramasamy said recently: "It would be an uphill battle for Harapan to make a comeback to the strength and resilience it had before the 2018 general elections."

Not only Lim but a whole host of political cretins have punched on the idea that Najib is some sort of bogeyman, rather than a willing accomplice to the ethnocracy and kleptocracy which had defined the 'ketuanan' ideology for decades.

The upcoming Johor state polls will determine how strong Umno/BN is, and while the political machinery of Umno/BN is slowly chugging along formulating a strategy, Harapan political operatives have yet to realise that all politics is local.

Social media is not a good barometer of how people feel about the government of the day, especially since the swing vote is not inclined to air their views on traditional friendly opposition media.

Asking if Najib would be the Umno PM candidate would mean something if corruption was not normalised in this country. We have the influential preacher Zakir Naik, who was courted by the Harapan religious establishment, claiming that it is better to vote for a corrupt Muslim than an honest non-Muslim.

We have a history of corruption scandals under the former Harapan prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad which was whitewashed by the Harapan establishment. Even when Harapan was in power, the old corrupt grandfathers in Sabah and Sarawak were ignored because it was politically expedient to do so.

Not to mention, the religious political operatives like PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang who said that "integrity without Islam is not accepted by Allah, and a person with faith who has no integrity is still better than someone with integrity but no faith".

And before you blame everything on the majority Malay community, keep in mind for decades Umno/BN was ushered in democratically while the then opposition - which had more cajones than they do now - was languishing in the wilderness.

Do Harapan political strategists really think that people who vote Umno/BN...