Get involved Go Guerilla if you want the public perception of Pakatan Rakyat, rejuvenated Expose the hypocrisy of BARISAN'S Muslim government

by Kee Thuan Chye

A LARGE part of politics hinges on perception. And the public perception of Pakatan Rakyat, especially of its component party PKR, is currently negative or one of skepticism. This is due in part to Pakatan’s own doing – as is evident in recent instances of major in-fighting among party members – and in part to merciless mainstream media spin. Illustration of Anwar IbrahimPakatan itself cannot counter the spin. It does not have a well-organized spin machinery of its own, and it does not have its own newspapers, radio and TV stations that reach out nationwide. Countering spin is also something that needs to be done on a daily basis. If a spin is not nipped in the bud and is allowed to grow instead, it will be that much harder to debunk it later. In Selangor, Pakatan has been bringing out Selangorkini, a weekly rag in Bahasa Malaysia that is supposed to provide some profile to the Pakatan-led state government’s activities and achievements, but this is not well-distributed. Many Selangorians are not even aware of its existence. In late November, the English-language Selangor Times was launched, but its target readership is mainly urbanites. Pakatan needs more than the votes of the urban areas to win the next general election. In fact, it needs a lot more to win the next general election. As it is, it cannot match what the BN Government is touting – a brighter future, a Malaysia with high-income status by 2020, through projects under the Economic Transformation Programme. Never mind that this is actually still a dream, an illusion; BN has been selling it on a grand scale to make it seem real. And the irony is, people are actually buying it. As we know, the key to persuading buyers is marketing. It is just as important in politics as public relations, and BN is savvy about this. That’s how it manages to hoodwink the masses into buying its product. Pakatan, on the other hand, hasn’t done much by way of marketing and public relations. And that’s putting it mildly. When the last general election came around, the electorate was faced with a BN government that was bereft of marketing ideas to take the country forward, and allegations were flying about of BN corruption and malpractices. As a result, many gave their votes to Pakatan. Even though BN is still associated with corruption and malpractices, Pakatan cannot merely bank on this again at the next general election. This time, the electorate will also want to see Pakatan’s performance record. Talk to anyone with sense in their heads and they’ll say they want to see Pakatan fulfill the promises they made prior to March 8, 2008. Quite a number will say some of these promises have so far not been made good. Just the other day, someone said to me he was unhappy about the low number of scholarships given out by the educational arm of the Selangor government to non-Malays. He felt the Pakatan-led government was no different from its predecessor. I had to ask him why he was emphasizing the issue so much when non-Malays by and large had not got federal government scholarships for decades. Why make a big case of this now just because it happens to involve the Pakatan-led Selangor government when the BN-led federal government has been doing it for far much longer? I also had to point out that we should cease looking at the issue from the perspective of race, and that the overriding criterion for giving out a scholarship, apart from scholastic merit, should be need. It doesn’t matter which race the recipient of the scholarship belongs to as long as he needs financial help to attain further education. This does not deviate from the economic agenda that Pakatan has been proposing, which, admittedly, is a logical and sensible one. Only a person who is deliberately contrarian would say it’s not. But is Pakatan going around explaining to the disgruntled that they should not be harping on an issue that has actually been with us for decades and instead accept that we should look at needs rather than race when it comes to welfare considerations? If it is, how effectively is it doing so? Is its counter-spin done in a concerted manner? There may not be much time left before the next general election is called. Until then, Pakatan not only has to undo the damage wrought by its internal bickering and the allegations of PKR’s party elections fraud; it also has to make the public feel confident that it is first of all effective and united as an alternative political coalition, and, more importantly, that it has the ability to govern the nation. So what can it do to pull this off in the short time it has? It is not in a position to hawk dreams and illusions like BN can because it doesn’t have a whole government machinery behind it to launch massive programs and public relations exercises. It doesn’t have the mass media as an ally. It cannot tell Malaysians how efficient it can be as the next government and what its policies will be. What are its options? Basically, it needs to learn from the wars in history in which the Davids managed to defeat the Goliaths. It needs to learn from the North Vietnamese who brought the mighty Americans almost to their knees. Its political tactics may have to be of the guerilla type – working hard on the ground, using unconventional methods to influence the voters, unleashing attacks that hit the enemy with surprise. For starters, it needs to penetrate the rural masses, especially the Malay heartland, to disabuse the readers ofUtusan Malaysia and viewers of TV1 and TV3 of the BN propaganda they are getting relentlessly on a daily basis. These are the people who will need to be won over if Pakatan hopes to conquer Putrajaya. And it will not be easy because they have long been indoctrinated by the BN-controlled media. Since Pakatan does not have its own media outlet, and since the rural electorate is not well-connected to the online media which provides alternative news and views, one thing Pakatan could do is organize its own “guerilla media”. This could be in the form of daily news sheets that serve as Pakatan’s print alternative to the mainstream media. They would counter accusations against it by BN; give the alternative spin to news in the mainstream media that glorifies BN’s actions and supports the BN cause; expose the shenanigans and corrupt practices of BN politicians. To be effective, these news sheets would have to be distributed to as many rural households as possible. And with lightning speed. The whole operation would call for highly organized planning and execution, and the guerilla media would have to be manned by professionals who know what they are doing and can do it well. It calls for funding, but, above all, it calls for the will to get it done. Pakatan needs to find that will, if it doesn’t have it already. We have seen how media spin, marketing and public relations have worked wonderfully for BN. If Pakatan doesn’t get down to playing that game to enhance its own cause – and with immediate effect – half the battle for Putrajaya could be lost. read this post by When The Times of India broke the Adarsh housing scam story in Mumbai, it seemed yet another, par for the course, happening in this scam-riddled nation of ours, until the details emerged. The army brass, top politicians, both ruling and non-ruling, babus, were equally culpable in the swindle in the name of war widows, whose 'jawan' husbands gave their lives for the nation. The loot in the name of those who gave their lives for their nation by those who are supposed to look after these martyrs' well-being was shocking. The more the details tumbled out, the more disgusting it got. It singed, at least for now, all those involved, including the chief minister of Maharashtra and former army and navy chiefs (yes, in plural), an NDA government minister noted for his sense of fairplay and propriety, and several others. It was almost as if I was being given a lesson by a big Indian builder who once told me, no one is totally clean. Everyone has a price - higher for some, lower for others. Shockingly, some of the defence services biggies have said they wouldn't have bought these flats if they had known these were for the war widows. This is as lame an excuse as one can get, really. When I know the cost of a property in a particular part of the city is 10X but I am still getting it for X, there is a reason for it. The prices were so low because dollops of waivers were granted to enable the building to come up, all in the name of a noble cause, houses for the war widows. All these biggies, when they say they had no clue, are lying. Shamelessly at that! I can recall a conversation with the cabinet secretary over a decade ago. The now retired top civil servant of the country told me: "In this country, if you need to stall a proposal, you have to say it is against national security. None will dare argue. And if you want to push through a proposal without a worry, somehow paint it as something for the benefit of the 'aam aadmi' or the armed forces, more specifically war widows." The context of that conversation was Ram Vilas Paswan's move to push, against the policy at that time, for full mobility of the limited mobility service based on CDMA technology. Apparently, Paswan had termed it as the poor man's mobile that would help the 'aam aadmi' and the cabinet had no option but to say yes! We all know who the real 'aam aadmi' was. Things have clearly not changed. If anything, they are worse and the biggies, including in the armed forces, have grown brazen about it. The state chief minister may lose his job, or the retired top defence babus may give up their claim over flats not meant for them, but this is not the point. The point is what has come over us that we don't think twice before indulging in acts that are patently wrong, even immoral? Our defence forces are among the last pillars the society has some confidence and pride in. Increasingly, though, this veneer is thinning. We have heard about the ketchup videos to get awards. The rot has started setting in not now but been going on for a while. In the high altitude of Ladakh, for example, it is common for tourist cab drivers to get their supply of petrol from armymen who sell fuel stolen from the army depots at a rate that is cheaper than the market. For the men selling, this is stolen stuff, so any price is good enough. If this is bad, the worse is what happens to the green veggies sent from Delhi and Chandigarh in huge transport airplanes for the jawans posted in Siachen glacier. The veggies land in Leh or Thoise and are then sent by choppers to the jawans. This is done so that the jawans at the highest battlefield in the world minimise their chances of contracting piles. But these veggies hardly make it to their final destination. Almost all of it is leaked into Leh market. It is common knowledge in Leh that the days the cold desert gets green veggies in market, it is simply because the defence guys have cheated their own and routed it to the market for tourists for a consideration. To say that the army brass don't know about it would be silly, for it is an open secret in Leh. As I said, in a nation where the CWG mess may soon be forgotten, and where scams are now a daily occurrence, this one shocked. It did so because in this country, while you play around with the living, it is perhaps the first case involving the defence services where the defence brass have been party to the loot involving their own dead. It is not only cheating the families of those who died, but even belittles their achievements. Sad! Expose the hypocrisy of BARISAN'S Muslim government Perhaps lost in the embarrassment felt by the US government over leaked cables by the website WikiLeaks are revelations that Muslim nations - from Yemen to Afghanistan, Pakistan to Egypt - have been deceiving their own people about the extent of their support for the worst aspects of US foreign policy. By Muqtedar Khan, December 1, 2010 My brother, the snake Newark, Delaware WikiLeaks is in the process of transforming foreign affairs and international relations in a dramatic fashion. It is revealing over 250,000 cables from US embassies worldwide to the State department and other classified documents. The consequences of this ‘mega-scoop’ will be very far reaching indeed. For the United States the issues are both strategic as well as ethical. On a strategic level the leaks, which expose frank assessment of foreign leaders by senior American officials and American thinking on many critical issues; will complicate Obama administration’s ability to deal with its allies and may increase global cynicism about US intentions. Many of the allies will be angry and distrustful. They will also be afraid of being candid in the future. All players in the future will be trying to second-guess each other, unwilling to articulate what their real intentions and goals are. After all nobody wishes to read a summary of their confidential dialogue with Americans in the New York Times. The revelations may also reverse many of the hard earned diplomatic gains made by the State department over the years in acquiring support for US policies from many nations. On the ethical level, the key question is: what will the American public do with the knowledge that the US government has allies who are known criminals; that it says one thing in public and pursues another policy in reality; bullying seems to be a standard operating procedure and intervening in every affair seems to be a natural instinct of US foreign policy. Will the Senate, or the House, call for hearings to hold the administration accountable? Will there be a public outcry? The revelations so far about the Muslim world are eye opening. Muslims, even some American Muslims have raised criticism of American foreign policy to the level of religious ritual. Often Muslim radicalism and alienation is explained as a direct consequence of US foreign policy alone. The point being, US foreign policy is anti-Islam and subversive of Muslim nations. Therefore Muslim anger and radicalism against the U.S. while often expressed in unjustifiable ways is still understandable. But now that the Shenanigans of Muslim nations, most importantly their collusion with America’s so called anti-Islam foreign policy, is exposed, what will Muslims do? Will they also hate Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar and other nations just as much as they hate America? Or will they recognize that nation states, have interests and they pursue them in whatever ways they can; and understand that US foreign policy neither advances nor targets any religion. The preliminary review of the cables by New York Times and the Guardian reveals the duplicity of many Arab nations on foreign policy, especially in the case of Iran. For example in the past few years, Arab nations have publicly countered Israeli propaganda that Iran is a bigger threat to the world, than the resolution of the Palestinian issue, with claims that the failure to bring a just solution to the Palestinians was the number one issue for Arabs and Muslims. But apparently, privately these same nations have been parroting Bibi Netanyahu’s mantra to the U.S., repeatedly asking the US to bomb Iran and even invade it with ground troops. The Saudis refer to Iran, a fellow Muslim and “Islamic nation” as “evil” and have requested the U.S. to “cut of the head of the snake”. The same cables also reveal that even now the main financiers of Al Qaeda are Saudi donors. American Presidents, George W. Bush and Barak H. Obama have identified Al Qaeda as the biggest threat to the U.S. and yet they collude with the nation whose citizens are its biggest financiers. Why don’t the Saudis cut off the head of the real snake, Al Qaeda, by arresting and imprisoning its financiers? Most Americans know that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists that attacked the US on September 11, 2001, were Saudis. None were Iranians. A significant number of foreign fighters who joined al Qaeda in Iraq were Saudis. This is a classic case of “the pot calling the kettle black!” Do not interpret my criticism of Saudi Arabia as support for Iran. Its current leaders are a bunch of thugs who stole governance from their own people by force and made a mockery out of the idea of an Islamic democracy. It seems that on key issues Arab foreign policy is the same as Israel. Except Israel is open, and Arab states are not. In future if we wish to understood Arab foreign policy, then all we have to do is take Israeli foreign policy and add hypocrisy (nifaaq) to it. Voila. Another level of hypocrisy that Muslim nations seem to be practicing is in their dealings with their own populations. While the US is worried that WikiLeaks latest revelations will undermine its relations with its allies, Muslim governments are worried that these same leaks will expose the extent to which they routinely lie to their own people. Nation after Muslim nation has been supporting and collaborating with the U.S. and lying to its public about the extent of its support for US foreign policy. For example, the Yemeni President acknowledged that he would continue to lie to his people and claim American military operations in Yemen as Yemeni operations. Similarly, the Pakistani government does not want its people to know the extent to which it cooperates with the U.S. on nuclear issues. It is amazing how Muslim governments engage in policies that they know their populations will not approve. Anyway now thanks to WikiLeaks, at least Muslims who hate America for its foreign policy must realize that their own countries are collaborators. Perhaps their hatred will now be more evenly spread rather than just focusing on the U.S. If they don’t, then they will be like their own governments - hypocritical.